Newsnation Benfield - Police Officer Robert Klein - Fairfield County, CT - 2022 Orb UFO

[deirdre]

hhmmm..actually this top part might be orange leaves (that would fall off by spring).. i only had sunglasses prescription so i couldnt tell eerrgg.. i really dont want to drive out there again.

people will just have to believe us unless @Kyle Ferriter gets better photos. (Kyle go mid to late afternoon or you'll get the sun messing up your colors!)

 

[jimmyslippin]

I've just noticed that two stars are visible in the original video. These match in Sitrec with two stars in the constellation Ophiuchus , specifically Eta Ophiuchi and 20-Ophiuchi


https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...com/15857/FairfieldFlarkey/20251013_075535.js

I just looked into this particular case for the first time, and the very first things that stood out to me were 1) the object looks just like a plane in the distance with a bit of light scattering from the fog coming off the lake, 2) there's actually multiple lights in the sky that are similar in movement and appearance to the object in question, 3) there's some really odd camera movements that could be interpreted as attempts to move those other objects out of the field of view. Then I felt like I was going mad as I waded through six pages without anyone bringing them up until this post!

I wonder how many of you use HDR enabled monitors? When I watch the video with HDR disabled it's hard to see some of these other lights, but they are very noticeable with HDR enabled. They caught my attention straight away. This came up before with the Skinwalker Ranch/CSS video and the debate over whether it disappeared behind a cloud or the Earth's shadow and people couldn't see the cloud I was talking about.

The "star" on the right is flight EDV5195

Yup, unsurprising.

What about this one that appears at about 0:57:

... and perhaps the same object again at about 1:30:

 

[jimmyslippin]

I am leaning towards agreeing. While the Mystery Light in this shot looks a lot like a classic "camera wiggling while light is pretty stationary" image, the other lights in the pic don't show the same wiggle trail (sorry if that got too technical...^_^) And the other pics look less like camera wiggle.movement happened.
View attachment 75079

Last chance for wiggle theory, for at least this one image -- if the camera was still for most of the exposure, and got jostled slightly right at, say, the end of the exposure, might the brightest light leave a trail while fainter lights (that need longer exposure to show up in a particular spot) don't? It seems logical, but others know more camera stuff than me. But since this is the image that shows the non-mirrored reflection, and is the one with the jiggle trail, it just seems such a nice fit... CAVEAT: things that look like a nice fit may not in fact be correct.

There is a very simple explanation for this image:

It's camera shake at the moment the long exposure started from either 1) physically pressing the shutter button or tapping on rear display (most likely), 2) vibration caused by mirror flap, otherwise known as mirror shock (far less likely).

Images like this are why you get a remote shutter trigger to avoid touching the camera, set a trigger delay of a few seconds so movement like this ends before the exposure begins, or perhaps spend a bit more money on your tripod and/or ballhead instead of settling for Manfrotto rubbish.

 

[jimmyslippin]

West Palm Beach to Westchester County Airport is a common route for Jet Blue. If someone really wants to test this, go out to the location and record the Jet Blue flight on in bound to Westchester from Officer Klein's location. Get a video from the direction he claimed, and a video from the direction you think is correct. There's a Jet Blue flight from Palm Beach to Westchester (same route) on November 1st, lands in weschester at 2334 EST

Wait... I'm confused. In post #119 you said you were part of a research team that filmed with NewsNation for multiple days.

The video you linked in post #124, I'm presuming you are one of these dudes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've already been there. Investigating this case, no less, with a group of other people.

Did any of you go and stand exactly where Klein said he shot the video from to independently confirm the location? The silhouette against the night sky gives you a decent stretch of clearly defined horizon in the video, not to mention the trees. Fantastic reference points to also independently confirm the direction Klein claims to have been facing. Can you tell me anything about that?

But the answer I'm most interested in... which direction is it that you think is correct and why?

Also, are you affiliated with SCU?

 

[deirdre]

Did any of you go and stand exactly where Klein said he shot the video from to independently confirm the location

obviously not or he wouldnt be asking "and the direction you think is correct"

Get a video from the direction he claimed, and a video from the direction you think is correct.

@Throwaway has kleins claimed direction as (see below,yellow line)..BUT the road turns so even if 90degrees was correct (it's not), klein would be facing this way in his car (pink line)

you can see the right side of that island in my vid where im holding phone 90degrees out my window.

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my guess is kleins report many months later, he didnt remember exactly where he stopped his car. they are very close in the News Nation video ironically*. the pink square is the view of kleins video. Orange dot is rough approximation of where ufo would have to be to line up with the trees in real life.

*to be fair, i had the video and couldnt find/recognize the tree in my vid, @flarkey found it using google car which showed a correct angle.

 

[flarkey]

I think @Throwaway days somewhere that Officer Klein said the orb was "over the other side of the lake" and therefore the direction they'd been analysing was straight across the lake (North-north east), rather than down the lake (south east). This is why they didn't include that JBU flight in their analysis - it was in the wrong direction according to the witness testimony.

 

[deirdre]

it was in the wrong direction according to the witness testimony.

not sure we can blame Klein for that. it WAS "over the other side of the lake" he just wasnt parked at the 2nd pull off (where that news nation video was shot).

 

[jimmyslippin]

obviously not or he wouldnt be asking "and the direction you think is correct"

Well, that doesn't necessarily follow. @Throwaway's comments about going back "in spring (to) match the tree in his video" imply he didn't confirm those details. But he was part of a team of what could be up to six "UAP investigators" that were sent the case in the summer of 2024 and had been working on it ever since. Maybe someone else in the team was assigned to that work. Maybe the work showing how they confirmed the direction Klein was facing is in one of their research papers that he mentioned. We just don't know. But we can find out by asking.

What's the first thing we ask for here? Metadata. More specifically, location, direction and time, so we can use publicly available resources to independently confirm these details as a starting point for further investigation. They had been given all three, but didn't notice the data didn't fit.

I'm genuinely interested in finding out why, and I'm also genuinely interested in whether or not the same mistake was made by two different teams of researchers. Are the NewsNation UAP investigators the same guys as the SCU ones?

 

[jarlrmai]

From what we can gather from the presentation the direction was assumed to be correct and thus some flights, including the solution were eliminated from selection.

The why seems to be a methodological problem of assuming the witness is accurate.

 

[deirdre]

Are the NewsNation UAP investigators the same guys as the SCU ones?

oh. i see. i did assume they were one and the same.

 

[deirdre]

The why seems to be a methodological problem of assuming the witness is accurate.

do we have exact quotes of what Klein said? i know i'm a bit biased toward our police officers, but if he said "i was near the 2nd pull off and the ufo was on the other side of the water"? then that would be accurate.


trust me there is really no reason they couldn't determine the trees were not at the 2nd pull off. There aren't THAT many trees to scan and its easy to walk around to view from all directions (i even filmed all the pull off trees from all directions earlier in April, just to be sure).

 

[jimmyslippin]

oh. i see. i did assume they were one and the same.

Yup, after looking at the full SCU presentation just now it would seem they are. My apologies, I'm still catching up with everything.

do we have exact quotes of what Klein said? i know i'm a bit biased toward our police officers, but if he said "i was near the 2nd pull off and the ufo was on the other side of the water"? then that would be accurate.


trust me there is really no reason they couldn't determine the trees were not at the 2nd pull off. There aren't THAT many trees to scan and its easy to walk around to view from all directions (i even filmed all the pull off trees from all directions earlier in April, just to be sure).

In the NewsNation interview Klein mentions the object being to his front and left as he is driving along. When he shines the light at it he just says it moves to the other side of the reservoir. He doesn't really mention a direction.

But here are a few slides from SCU's presentation.

... and ...

So one of the outcomes of the initial expedition to the site was establishing Officer Klein's observation point, and Officer Klein appears to have been onsite to assist them.

Hmmmm.....

 

[deirdre]

My apologies, I'm still catching up with everything.

no apology necessary, i barely remember what i read in this thread over a year ago... so i'm kinda trusting your new read eyes

 

[jarlrmai]

People here may find this PDF interesting

https://github.com/DrDougB/2022-Saugatuck-Reservoir/blob/main/UPDATE-Connecticut UAP-05-07-2026.pdf

It contains a recent update to the SCU presentation on this case

 

[flarkey]

Page 16 - I'm famous

 

[NorCal Dave]

I'm famous

As you should be!

This seems to show that if one looks for a logical, though mundane, explanation for UFO sightings, one often finds them. If one looks for anything but a logical, though mundane, explanation one misses them. They start from the UFO angle and never see the aircraft, at least until it's painfully obvious.

Maybe more importantly, it shows that often when the known physical attributes involved, like JBU1168 looking just like what's in the video, are dismissed by witness testimony, it may be the testimony that is incorrect. Yet another example of the problems with witness testimony.

 

[jarlrmai]

 

[Ann K]

They start from the UFO angle and never see the aircraft, at least until it's painfully obvious.

I remember reading in a novel (although I can't recall the book) about a guy who is out in the dark to fix his car, and as he is looking in the trunk he sees a huge hand reaching for him ("the rapture", I think the interpretation was) ...and then his hand closed on the flashlight he was reaching for in his back pocket...

He fixed the car and went on his way.

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

A FINAL NOTE

• This presentation was originally created for the 2026 SCU Conference,
however, our abstract unfortunately did not make the cut.
• Hence, we are publishing this on Dr. Buettner's GitHub site to provide
open communication about the status of this UAP investigation.
• This is NOT our final word on this case.
• Stay tuned here as we continue to analyze data from our excursions
to this location, can plan further excursions with better equipment

Not their final word? More investigation with better equipment? Oh I get it!

They must intend to return to the same location at a similar date/time of year to capture similar (if not identical) aircraft and flight paths with multiple imaging devices of varying sensor types and quality. This would inform a more sophisticated comparative analysis.

The title of the first paper could be something like "Where does the LIZ lie?".

They could also return across multiple nights, each time with a different blind group of volunteer eyewitnesses, i.e. persons with no prior knowledge of the location or subject of the event(s) to be observed. Ideally these volunteers should have varying backgrounds.

The title of the second paper could be something like "Where does the SUE lie?".

SUE = Subjective UAP Experience

The salacious title of the third paper could be "The relationship between LIZ and SUE".

Surely, they wouldn't be returning to the original location with the hope of capturing an alien trans-medium extra-dimensional time-travelling sentient-psychic probe-orb, right?

Although for the study, they should recruit some eyewitnesses who believe in such things.

 

[NoParty]

"The relationship between LIZ and SUE".

In this political climate, that might not fly. Could it be LIZ and a boy often known as SUE?

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

@NoParty ironically, it is research like this that would probably elicit far more rejection in the UFO space.

Absorption and spiritual experience: A review of evidence and potential mechanisms
Michael Lifshitz, Michiel van Elk, T.M. Luhrmann,
Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 73, 2019

Abstract: Some people seem to have a 'talent' for spiritual experience: they readily sense the presence of supernatural beings, receive special messages from God, and report intense feelings of self-transcendence, awe and wonder. Here we review converging strands of evidence to argue that the trait of 'absorption' captures a general proclivity for having spiritual experiences. Participants scoring highly on the Tellegen Absorption Scale report vivid experiences of hearing God's voice during prayer, intense mystical experiences in response to psychedelics or placebo brain-stimulation, and strong feelings of presence and transcendence when confronted with natural beauty, virtual reality, or music. ... It seems to enable that which must be imagined to feel more real.

IMO this reality is more relevant to ufology than those with a credulous mindset may care to realize or accept. This applies equally to both the experiencers and researchers themselves, including the SCU.

One of the most common criticisms of skeptics is "pearl clutching" accusation of conceit in prioritising objective evidence over subjective testimony. The false choice presented is to either accept testimony as credible or label the witness a liar.

Even more ironic, those who think like this, also consider themselves to be open-minded.

 

[Ann K]

Even more ironic, those who think like this, also consider themselves to be open-minded.

An often-stated warning is "Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out" ...which would seem to be a warning unheeded by those who uncritically embrace woo and think of those who insist on material facts as being the short-sighted ones.

 

[NorCal Dave]

One of the most common criticisms of skeptics is "pearl clutching" accusation of conceit in prioritising objective evidence over subjective testimony. The false choice presented is to either accept testimony as credible or label the witness a liar.

Agreed. We have French UFO researcher @Baptiste Fr making similar claims in the French UFO assembly thread. He repeatedly emphasized the importance of witness testimony. Yet once again, here is a prime example of supposedly accurate witness testimony being used to discount a logical and I would argue, commonly mundane explanation for an other-worldly UFO. It took a large amount of evidence correlated together to finally move the needle on the possibility that the witness was mistaken.

And at no point in this thread did anyone here suggest that officer Klein was "crazy" or "delusional" or "lying" or any other straw-man argument put forth by UFOlogist about his experience. It was just pointed out that aircraft landing lights when zoomed in look like glowing plasmoids, (I have my own similar videos), from the supposed location there was in fact a Jet Blue aircraft that was moving in the right direction, at the right time with it's landing lights on. This seems a lot more simple and logical, than there was a Jet Blue aircraft producing the exact effect at the same time and place, BUT the witness was looking a bit the other way, so there was ALSO a glowing unidentified plasmiod to the left of the aircraft.

As noted in the French UFO thread, so much of UFOlogy relies on witness testimony, that there is an unreasonable over emphasis on it, despite all the known problems. But if one is bent on finding UFOs, as in other-worldly likely alien visitation, then that's where most of the evidence is. While SCU has agreed that it is 90% likely this video depicts an airliner, they say the case is not closed. There is more investigation to do because of other eye witness testimony. It's all they have.

Witness testimony, in this case a slightly miss-remembered location, turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. It turns a regularly scheduled Jet Blue flight into a glowing plasmoid of possible alien origin.

French assembly UAP meeting:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/fr...o-host-uap-seminar-with-true-believers.14969/

EDIT: typos

 

[yoshy]

People here may find this PDF interesting

https://github.com/DrDougB/2022-Saugatuck-Reservoir/blob/main/UPDATE-Connecticut UAP-05-07-2026.pdf

It contains a recent update to the SCU presentation on this case

This presentation was originally created for the 2026 SCU Conference, however, our abstract unfortunately did not make the cut.

Didn't make the cut? For a conference that the lead author is running? This LARPing as a real scientific organization with a real scientific conference is getting out of hand

While some may consider this case closed, we do not.

Just take the L, jeez. They're making it more embarrassing than it already is

 

[yoshy]

I remember reading in a novel (although I can't recall the book) about a guy who is out in the dark to fix his car, and as he is looking in the trunk he sees a huge hand reaching for him ("the rapture", I think the interpretation was) ...and then his hand closed on the flashlight he was reaching for in his back pocket...

He fixed the car and went on his way.

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl (1955), perhaps? (I put your description into ChatGPT)

 

[Ann K]

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl (1955), perhaps? (I put your description into ChatGPT)

I don't think so. Although I read a lot of sci-fi stories in my youth (including Pohl's), I have the impression that this one was written more recently by someone whose name I've forgotten, but who wrote a number of what I thought of as "California" novels, quite prescient but funny. I read several of his works in a row, as they were entertaining and enjoyable, but alas, there have been too many things in my "input" stream, and I have to lose a memory before I have room to learn something new!

Written by TC Boyle, perhaps?

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

Agreed. We have French UFO researcher @Baptiste Fr making similar claims in the French UFO assembly thread. He repeatedly emphasized the importance of witness testimony. Yet once again, here is a prime example of supposedly accurate witness testimony being used to discount a logical and I would argue, commonly mundane explanation for an other-worldly UFO. It took a large amount of evidence correlated together to finally move the needle on the possibility that the witness was mistaken.

And at no point in this thread did anyone here suggest that officer Klein was "crazy" or "delusional" or "lying" or any other straw-man argument put forth by UFOlogist about his experience. It was just pointed out that aircraft landing lights when zoomed in look like glowing plasmoids, (I have my own similar videos), from the supposed location there was in fact a Jet Blue aircraft that was moving in the right direction, at the right time with it's landing lights on. This seems a lot more simple and logical, than there was a Jet Blue aircraft producing the exact effect at the same time and place, BUT the witness was looking a bit the other way, so there was ALSO a glowing unidentified plasmiod to the left of the aircraft.

As noted in the French UFO thread, so much of UFOlogy relies on witness testimony, that there is an unreasonable over emphasis on it, despite all the known problems. But if one is bent on finding UFOs, as in other-worldly likely alien visitation, then that's where most of the evidence is. While SCU has agreed that it is 90% likely this video depicts an airliner, they say the case is not closed. There is more investigation to do because of other eye witness testimony. It's all they have.

Witness testimony, in this case a slightly miss-remembered location, turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. It turns a regularly scheduled Jet Blue flight into a glowing plasmoid of possible alien origin.

French assembly UAP meeting:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/fr...o-host-uap-seminar-with-true-believers.14969/

EDIT: typos

I really don't understand this way of thinking (of most ufologists).
I really suspect some pilots somewhere might have looked at something odd, maybe possible undiscovered phenomena. But I would never ask anyone to count that as proof of anything.