what lies beyond

On this night three years ago, the mass UFO sighting known as The Kilcullen Incident, took place.
Shortly after midnight, at least several hundred people across South Kildare and County Carlow, witnessed bright lights hovering over the Wicklow mountains.
Many of the witnesses were in the town of Kilcullen where the best documentary footage of the lights was taken.
The incident is considered the most widespread and best documented UFO sighting in Irish history.
The title by which it has become known is taken from a video of the lights filmed by my father from our house in Kilcullen.
For a few weeks the Lights Of June were the most discussed topic of conversation in the region, supplanting concerns about international politics and terrorism.
In late July there was another major sighting.
Business woman Nessa Dunlea phoned me to say she had seen the phenomena a few minutes earlier as she drove home.
It was still daylight.
I grabbed my camera, ran outside into the field adjoining the house.
Four lights lit up the sky in front of me.
I got one photograph before the lights disappeared.
For me the second incident would be more spectacular.
But I never got a chance to calm down and check my memory of what I'd seen against video footage.
This time there was no video footage.
I would postulate that my memory of the second incident is more "imaginative" (and less dependable) than my memory of the first.
This is because my memory of the first incident as it happened, was later continually reinforced and anchored by repeated viewing of the video footage.
My imagination never got a chance to take over.
What is interesting is the fact that even a fairly dependable witness like myself should become so undependable without proper video or photographic verification to correlate with what I thought I'd seen.
Some time after witnessing The Lights Of July, I was contacted by the Irish army.
Army experts viewed the evidence I'd collected relating to both incidents.
They asserted most forcefully that the lights were in fact army parachute flares.
They added that the army had been on manoeuvres on the Wicklow mountains when the first sighting took place.
They stated that they were sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the UFO's were in fact army ordinance used by gun crews to illuminate their targets.