loose ends

Colonel Howard Berney arrived at the chateau tonight with a compass. He took a bearing in the garden. He informed us that the Lights Of June had appeared from the direction of the army shooting range at the Glen of Imaal on the Wicklow mountains.
Comandant John Martin has informed me that an army night shooting exercise was taking place at the Glen of Imaal on June 23rd when we first saw the lights.
My father TN Healy now accepts the lights were indeed army parachute flares.
My own conclusion is as follows.
I believe there is a 90 percent probability the lights we saw were army parachute flares.
I allow for a ten percent possibility they were something else.
I am still keeping my mind open to the possibility of another explanation because:
1. Colonel Berney was certain the lights were flares but he recognised that army shooters would normally aim to fire the flares high in the sky and have them burn out close to the ground. None of these lights behave in that way.
2. Commandant Martin said he was certain the lights were flares but that he would not bet his house on it.
3. There were other minor inconsistencies in the analysis of the army experts.
4. A framed photograph fell off the piano as I passed it shortly after the first sighting. (A coincidence. But still part of the reason I am not willing to state conclusively that the lights were flares.)
5. Some books and kitchen utenils fell off a shelf in Giovanna Rampazzo's apartment as we watched the DVD of the June sighting. (Another coincidence.)
6. The night after we saw the Lights Of July we saw another quite different phenomena. A luminous block of light apparently stretching for miles in the same patch of sky. My father believes this was a weather phenomenon. It might also have been some sort of laser light, the sort used for advertising promotions or to create visual effects outside nightclubs. Perhaps a nightclub over towards the mountains was shining a laser upwards and produced the effect.
7. There was an early morning sighting of something unexplained in June. My father filmed it. It may be a cloud.
8. There was an early morning sighting of a light in the sky above Colonel Berney's house. This is printed above. It is probably an aeroplane.
9. The Lights Of June were seen in the towns of Naas, Kilcullen, Athy and Carlow. We might expect army parachute flares to be causing similar sightings all the time if they had indeed caused this one.

The sightings of June and July were most probably army parachute flares. I will not be surprised if they prove to be something else.