It also had its side effects.
An astronomer from the observatory that houses the world famous 200- inch telescope on top of Mt. Palomar told me: "I hate to admit it but the number of week end visitors has picked up here. People drive down to hear George and decide that since they're down here they might as well come up and see our establishment."
But George Adamski didn't hold the front center of the stage for long. In rapid succession others stepped forward and hesitantly admitted that they too had been contacted.
Truman Bethurum, a journeyman mechanic of Redondo Beach, California, was next up.
Actually, he admitted, he had been the first earthman to talk to a person from another world. Back on the night of July 26, 1952, four months before Adamski, a group of eight or ten, short, olive-skinned men with black wavy hair, had awakened him while he was asleep in a truck in the desert near Mormon Flats, Nevada.
These little men, unlike Adamski's, spoke any language.
"You name it," they'd quipped to Bethurum, "we speak it."
In a newspaper article that was voted "Best Read of 1953," Bethurum told how the little men he met had been more cooperative and had actually taken him into their saucer, a huge job 300 feet in diameter and 16 feet high.
Once inside, Bethurum had met the captain of the "scow"—a true leader of men. Aura Rhanes was her name and she was a Venus de Milo with arms and warm blood. "When she spoke her words rhymed." They chatted and Bethurum learned that he was on the "Admiral's scow" the command ship of Clarion's fleet of saucers.
All in all, Bethurum made eleven visits to Aura's scow. Each time they'd sit and talk. Bethurum told her about the earth and she told of the idyllic, Shangri-La type planet of Clarion—a yet undiscovered planet which is always opposite the moon.