Ep 266: Bethurum Part 2 – UFOs and the Occult

“I expect to be around for thousands of years, but the water in your deserts will mostly be tears.”

— Captain Aura Rhanes, from Truman Bethurum's 1954 book, "Aboard a Flying Saucer"

Description:

For whatever reason, 1952, the year of Truman Bethurum's encounters with saucer Captain Aura Rhanes and her crew, was a watershed year for UFO interactions and the Contactee movement. The period is mainly known for marking an era of peaceable and friendly exchanges with aliens, despite the predictable fears of the "other" depicted in 1950s Science Fiction and fueled by Cold War tensions. Sometimes colloquially referred to as "Space Brothers" (which could include Bethurum's "Space Sister" Rhanes) or occasionally an alien race of "Nordics," these benevolent otherworldly visitors often urged humans to live in harmony, to care for our planet, and warned us of the dangers of the atomic age. The overall message is they were here to protect us from ourselves. But as welcoming and comforting as that sounds, there is a much-overlooked aspect of some of the personalities involved in this generation of heralds – a fair number of them had ties to occult beliefs and practices. From Aleister Crowley's magick and Jack Parsons to the wackier exploits of George Hunt Williamson, MIB threats to Albert K. Bender, William Dudley Pelley's fondness for Nazism, to the more modern cult of Marshall Applewhite and the current belief by some officials that aliens are demonic, the themes grow darker and more sinister. There is no doubt that a throughline has existed with the "Saucer Seers" from hopeful communions to the Dark Arts because it requires a belief in access to the mystical. We're joined once again by Rob Kristoffersen and Rich Hatem for part two of our discussion as we explore the connection between UFOs and the occult.

Reference Links:

• Contactee on Wikipedia

• Emanuel Swedenborg

• Article on Truman Bethurum by Matt Weinstock from the Daily News, Los Angeles, California, Wed, Oct 7, 1953, Page 26

• UFO religion

• Edward J. Ruppelt

• Donald Keyhoe

• Fred Crisman

• Allen Dulles

• Gorman dogfight

• “Welcome UFO People | Somewhere in the Skies” with Rob Kristoffersen on Ryan Sprague’s YouTube channel

• The Rolling Through the Realms actual play Dungeons and Dragons podcast on Audacy

• The “Encounters” documentary series on Netflix

• James Fox’s 2020 documentary, The Phenomenon

• PDF: Ronnie Hill’s alien/UFO encounter written statement

• “The Day I Met an Alien 👽: Ronnie Hill's Incredible UFO Footage 📷” on the Sci-Fi Archives YouTube channel

• “Witness of Another World (2019) | Official English Trailer HD” from 1091 Pictures YouTube channel

• Mass alien abduction at the Coronado Hotel, CA in The Coronado Incident by Yvonne Smith on UnknownCountry.com

• "THE JESSE LONG Jr. ALIEN ABDUCTION - 1957” documentary on the UFO Everyday! YouTube channel

• “1952-07-02: Newhouse UFO Tremonton Utah” on the Tom Owens YouTube channel

• “Meade Layne, Mark Probert and the Inner Circle” on the Chasing UFOs blog

• “Mark Probert, Telegnosis, and UFOs: A Vinyl Mystery” on Mediated Signals

• KOSMON UNITY magazine, 1952, from The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals IAPSOP

• “The Cult of I AM : The WILD Story of Guy & Edna Ballard's New Age Religious Movement” on the Weird Reads with Emily Louise YouTube channel

• “164: Paranoid Skepticism with Emily Louise” on Rob Kristoffersen’s Our Strange Skies: UFOs Throughout History podcast

• Flatwoods monster

• Project Grudge

• Project Blue Book

• Hotel Saranac – hotelsaranac.com

• “The Best Years of Our Lives,” a 1946 motion picture

• “The Manchurian Candidate,” a 1962 motion picture

• “The Case against C. W. Leadbeater” on blavatskytheosophy.com

• “1952 Washington, D.C., UFO incident” on Wikipedia

• “Project Blue Book: Home Movies in UFO Reports” on National Archives – The Unwritten Record

• Robertson Panel

• William Dudley Pelley episode on The Saucer Life podcast with Aaron Gulyas

• "I AM" Activity Movement

• “Flying Saucer Pilgrimage” by Bryant and Helen Reeve on Internet Archive

• Guy Ballard

• George Hunt Williamson

• George Adamski

• Helena Blavatsky

• Ronnie Hill’s encounter with the “Little Man of North Carolina” alien on Rob Kristoffersen’s Twitter/X thread

• “The Delphos Ring And Strange Cases Of Physical UFO Evidence” on UFOInsight.com

• Nordic aliens on Wikipedia

• “Scientists map 1,000 feet of hidden 'structures' deep below the dark side of the moon” on LiveScience.com

• Aleister Crowley

• Nazi UFOs

• Occultism in Nazism

• The motion picture Harper, with Paul Newman

• “The Moon’s Dark Secret: Aliens Harvesting Human Souls for FOOD” on the Why Files YouTube channel

• Thomas Townsend Brown

• Truman Bethurum’s entry on Wikipedia

• Photo of Truman Bethurum from his book’s dust jacket

• Mormon Mesa, Nevada

• “Delbert Newhouse UFO Footage - 1952 - Tremonton, Utah” from the MrCL10 YouTube channel

• “Scoutmaster Sonny DesVergers got burned by a UFO, encounter remembered by eyewitness Chuck Stevens” from the Eyes on Cinema YouTube channel

• Concrete Batch Plant Operator job specifications

• Definition of a scow boat on Wikipedia

• “Mahatmas and Space Brothers: The Ideologies of Alleged Contact with Mahatmas and Space Brothers: the Ideologies of Alleged Contact with Extraterrestrials” from the Journal of American Culture

• “The Screenwriting Mystic Who Wanted to Be the American Führer” from Smithsonian Magazine

• William Dudley Pelley entry on Wikipedia

• “The Face in the Window” by William Dudley Pelley, published on October 9, 1921 in The Sunday Star, Washington, DC

• “The UFO Sightings that Pushed the UK to Take ‘Flying Saucers’ More Seriously” from History.com

• Good Hope mine, Riverside Co. California, near one of Bethurum’s childhood homes

• Double Negative (1969) is a work of land art by Michael Heizer. It is located in the Moapa Valley on Mormon Mesa near Overton, Nevada.

• Nick Redfern on The Collins Elite

• “The "Collins Elite" Group - Is this the unofficial grouping of senior US military/intelligence officials who believe the Phenomenon to Be Demonic?” on Old subreddit UFOs

• “UFO'S Aliens Demons Fallen Angels & Deception” from the Tetelestai Paid in Full YouTube channel

• The motion picture, Dark City

• 1942 Dodge WC 53 Carryall Restoration Introduction on the Military Collectors’ YouTube channel

• “Video Interview (now since deleted) with Venusian Commander Aura Rhanes” from the Prepare for Change website

• “Scientists map 1,000 feet of hidden 'structures' deep below the dark side of the moon” from LiveScience.com

• “If Earth had a second moon hidden exactly behind the Moon, how would we know?” on the Old subreddit AskScienceDiscussion

• Gaviota Tunnel, northwest of Santa Barbara, CA, which Bethurum worked on

• The Wells Cargo construction company — Bethurum was friends with the owners at the time

• Perkins chain of family restaurants

• “Oahspe: A New Bible” entry on Wikipedia

• Raymond A. Palmer, onetime publisher of Fate Magazine

• Richard Sharpe Shaver and “The Shaver Mystery”

• All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) website, aaro.mil

• “Keep it Dark” by Genesis

 

Location:

Mormon Mesa, Nevada, near where Truman Bethurum claimed to have interacted with aliens and their flying saucer while he was working on an Asphalt Mixing Plant project.

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CREDITS:

Episode 266: Bethurum Part 2 – UFOs and the Occult. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound. Music and Sound Design by Allen Carrescia. Tess Pfeifle, Producer and Lead Researcher. Ed Voccola, Technical Producer. Research Support from The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2023 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.