MP3 Audio: Truman Bethurum 1954 Radio Interview

 

The now-defunct "Audio History of Ufology" Faded Discs Collection of Wendy Connors included an MP3 audio file of a radio interview described as "Truman Bethurum guests on Nancy Allen's Book Review program 08:06:1954."  Some transcribed excerpts follow or you may listen to the eleven and a half minute interview by clicking on the audio player below.
 
[7-20-12 Update: Due to technology changes at Google Documents, the audio player no longer functions so here is a link to https://soundcloud.com/mark-russell-bell/sets/flying-saucer-contactees.]
 

Interviewer: In this twentieth century, I think most of us would acknowledge that it's a mistake to say that anything is impossible but we have become so skeptical that perhaps the pendulum has swung from the complete credulity of, say, a couple of hundred years ago, when people were ready to accept anything.  Now we have come to the point where it's difficult to accept anything at all unless we can touch it and feel it and smell it and call it concrete.  Well this book, Aboard a Flying Saucer, is Mr. Bethurum's true experiences of a meeting with space people from the planet 'Clarion' . . .

Interviewer: . . . the first thing I'd like to ask you is if you were interested in this subject of space travel and (or "AND") the people who might exist on other planets before you had this experience?

TB: Not at all.  I have never in my life bought or read a science fiction magazine and I wouldn't have believed my own mother had she been alive and told me that this thing could exist one second before I saw it.  I wouldn't have believed her.  I would have laughed at her.  It was that unreal to me until I actually saw it.

Interviewer: . . . Well did these people feel that it was important at all that we know about them?  We here on the Earth?

TB: They did.  They seemed to think it was important but they weren't anxious in proving it to anybody.  Let people find it out for themselves.  And many, many people have seen them.  They found the place where it set down in the desert and they've seen the people come into a restaurant — or seen them in the restaurant.  They didn't see 'em either come in or leave but they saw them in there.  When they left, they left as mysteriously as they arrived.

Interviewer: . . . Well it's true that all new ideas have never had an easy time amongst human beings . . .

TB: . . . There's some reason the people that have had this opportunity to talk to these people have never actually got anything beneficial to prove that they are — have actually talked to these people.  I had a note given to me in Chinese and also one in French.  And I have them photostatted and put in the book.

Interviewer: . . . These experiences and publication of your book, Mr. Bethurum, have made an entire new life for you, haven't they?

TB: It has and — it hasn't benefited me financially, I can tell you that . . . I made much more money working at construction work, which is my really happy — my happy way of earning a living but I believe I have a message for the people of the world in this book . . .

TB: . . . Every word in that book is true.