Truman Bethurum published his story of extraterrestrial contact in 1954, in a book entitled Aboard a Flying Saucer. His claim was that he had been carrying out road maintenance on a highway running through the Nevada desert when he encountered five aliens, who had arrived in a massive spacecraft. He described the extraterrestrials as being olive skinned, about five feet tall, and wearing uniforms. They spoke perfect English, and looked sufficiently human to move around freely on Earth, which they did from time to time.

Bethurum said that the craft was captained by a female named Aura Rhanes. He described her in various differed ways, all of them complimentary: ‘Queen of women’ and 'Tops in shapeliness and beauty’ being two examples. Some time after the initial encounter, Bethurum saw Aura Rhanes drinking a glass of orange juice at a restaurant and frankly admitted that she ignored him.

Bethurum’s aliens came from a planet called Clarion, which was supposedly free of disease, war, or any other perils. Clarion was said to be quite close to Earth, but permanently hidden behind the moon. Modern space exploration has not revealed such a celestial body, but it is entirely possible that Bethurum did have an extraterrestrial encounter with aliens who were not truthful. Why would aliens lie to us about the location of their home planet? One reason might be that when we develop viable space travel, they do not particularly want us coming to visit them.