Hiya Stargate,
Enjoyed your story, so I thought I would share my sighting experience.
I was living in Letterkenny at the time and working in Dublin, as a joiner I had to travel to get work. Anyway, my wife was packing the car for me ( she couldn't wait to get rid of me ) and I was having a shower, shave &
..., She came screaming into the house terrified and said there was something in the sky, so I went and had a look and sure enough, above and to the west was a large bright object. It was 4 o'clock in the morning and the sky was clear. It was too close to be a star or a passing satellite, and besides that, coming from it were pairs of smaller lights which seemed to drop down from it and head in a southerly direction. These pairs came out at intervals of i'd guess a couple of minutes and this went on for at least an hour. One of the strange things was when one of the smaller lights shot off in a south easterly direction, towards Derry, and hovered there for a while, about 10 minutes, but it was changing to a reddish colour, then suddenly it shot off to join the others. They all moved fairly slow, ye'd think they were out for a wee dander!! The wife wouldn't come out again, but I was mesmerised to the extent that I never thought of ringing the Gardai 'til it was too late. By the time I rang, the cloud cover had come over, but the object was probably still there but obscured by the clouds. The Gard I spoke to put the phone down and had a look but couldn't see anything.., but fair play to him, he didn't make me out as a crank, he seemed used to it.
Such was the effect on the wife, she wouldn't let me go to work for two days.... and it wasn't me body she was after
This happened about several weeks after the Hale Bop comet had passed, whatever year that was.
So there ye have it, my alien conversion!
Tom