Bryant and Helen Reeve's Commentary about Truman Bethurum

Helen and Bryant Reeve

Caption from Flying Saucer Pilgrimage:

   Bryant Reeve is an American Engineer, a graduate of Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He and his wife Helen became interested in Saucers in 1953, and due to conflicting information and official denials decided to make their own investigation.
   Flying Saucer Pilgrimage is the story of their amazing private research which took two year's time and over 23,000 miles of travel.
   Above photograph was taken in 1955 on the balcony of their apartment in Mexico City while they were investigating saucers South of the Border.

The Reeves' autobiographical book was first published in 1957 by Ray Palmer's Amherst Press in Wisconsin.  The book was republished in 1965 by Palmer Publications, Inc.  The following excerpt is from Chapter III "We Meet Truman Bethurum."  Two footnotes are included in parentheses.

 

Truman Bethurum

A new book: Aboard A Flying Saucer by Truman Bethurum was released, and arrangements were made to have Mr. Bethurum come to Detroit.  We had read his book and were looking forward eagerly to meeting the author and hearing his lecture.  We enjoyed his talk immensely, but as always we were more interested in the man behind the book, the man behind the lecture, the personality having the experience.  In this respect we were quite fortunate because during their stay in Detroit Mr. & Mrs. Bethurum came to our home to visit us.  We became so enthralled in his experiences that we talked until the wee small hours of the morning.

Mr. Bethurum is a large, tall, and husky out-of-doors type of man.  His schooling has been limited to grammar school and a few years in high school, but he nevertheless speaks with an excellent choice of words.  In his work he is an expert maintenance mechanic familiar with dredges and road building equipment and is highly respected by his fellow workers.  We liked his simple, sincere and forthright nature.

We tried to put ourselves in his place as he related in private the highlights of his amazing encounters with space-people and answered our questions in the relaxed and unrestrained atmosphere of our home.  We found that it means much to get away from the tense, formal and sometimes hostile atmosphere of a public lecture where saucerers have to be on guard or on the defensive every moment.  We feel that our best understanding of the entire subject has come about from these "relaxed" meetings with saucerers whom we were fortunate enough to meet.  We cannot, of course, directly verify Mr. Bethurum's experiences because we were not present.  All we can do is to convey to you our own impressions of the man and his experiences as we discussed them with him in our home.

For those who are not familiar with his experiences may we briefly recount that on a July night in 1952 he first contacted a large round flat flying saucer in a desolate area near Glendale Nevada, U. S. A.  The crew led him to the "captain" who turned out to be feminine instead of masculine.* (*This space-being gave her name as "Aura Rhanes."  The authors have felt that this might well be a symbolic name conveying the cosmic concept that "the aura reigns."  Deep students of cosmic truth recognize that control of the aura is one of the cosmic steps in man's regaining his lost control of himself and of matter.)  He had the experience of actually boarding the space-ship and conversing with the captain in English.  He later learned that she could speak and write several of our earth languages.  Between July and November of 1952 Mr. Bethurum made eleven contacts and boarded the same craft on as many occasions.  However he was not given a ride on the saucer.  He went aboard it on the ground.  Many details are set forth in his written account, and to us these details are worthy of intense study by any sincere researcher.  Taken alone these details might appear to be too fantastic to merit serious attention, but in terms of the coordinating work of our research they are, in our opinion, of outstanding value as a contribution to our human knowledge of this vast subject.  The details are not out of line with the larger picture of space-craft, space-people and space-phenomena which gradually unfolded to our astonished eyes as our saucer pilgrimage proceeded.

We were favorably and very deeply impressed with Mr. Bethurum's unimaginative sincerity.  It is no secret and certainly no unfavorable reflection on him that he felt he needed help in writing his book.  The ghost writer "played up" the cosmic romance angle of his experience and used words and phrases of a nature which he himself might never have employed.

Knowing the man as we do, may we state that even after the greater perspective of our pilgrimage we still regard his experiences as some of the greatest contributions in the entire saucer saga.  In our humble opinion, he had not only one of the greatest personal saucer experiences, but he had one of the hardest "rows to hoe" — because not a single friend had the courage to be a witness to the contacts.  Moreover, his naturalness and simple honesty resulted in an account of his experiences uncontaminated by speculative science or philosophical propaganda.  It was, in short, a priceless factual account.  We often wonder whether if some of us ordinary mortals had those experiences we could have told about them as factually and sincerely as he did.  We have learned that space-visitors are quite "choosey" as regards the characteristics of those who are physically contacted, and in our thinking Truman Bethurum had certain qualities which made him acceptable for these contacts.

Moreover, without any preknowledge on his part of the peculiar mastery which space-beings are able to exercise over energy or matter, he told us the incident covering the instantaneous disappearance of his flashlight and the experiences of his seeing his space-friends leave a restaurant while a companion whom he had posted outside did not see them come out.  Serious students of this subject will understand the deeper implications of these two incidents.  However, Mr. Bethurum said he did not know how these things happened, they just happened.

Regarding the inability of our astronomers to locate a planet called "Clarion" behind the moon from which the saucer came, we discussed this point with  Mr. Bethurum in detail.  From our discussion and questioning we gathered that the space-ship captain did not intend to convey the idea that the saucer came from a planet in our own solar system behind the moon, but that it came from a planet in another more distant solar system, and the phrase "behind the moon" was a general designation used for distant outer-space.

We have kept in contact with this pioneer saucerer by correspondence and know of his subsequent efforts to again contact the space-ship.  We know that a space-ship has since flown over him twice but has not landed.* (*More recently the authors have received word from Truman Bethurum stating that he is in Prescott, Arizona, that his contact with extra-terrestrial beings is continuing, and that under their guidance he is endeavoring to establish a New Age "Sanctuary of Thought," a group dedicated to world peace.)  In these, his latest efforts, we sincerely wish him well.