balls of bright light with consciousness

Mid to late August 1976. My future wife & i would sit and talk late into the night hours in her Chevy Vega at my parent's house. There were large old maple trees to the west, toward Saint Joseph, Mo. She worked second shift so we were usually up late into the night, sitting in the driveway. I grew up in the country, watching the night skies, used to the stars and their positions, i noticed a star directly to the north that'd never been there. Then it was gone. Then it was back. As if it was turning a light on and off every minute or so. Then there appeared two bright lights behind the maple trees, to the west. Brighter than venus, i knew they must be airships of some sort, yet they didn't move. There is an airport across the river so at first i didn't think much of it. Then the "light" on the left, or south, began moving south while the other remained stationary. We passed it off as airplanes or something. Two nights later the same scenerio occured. I laughed as i got out of her Vega jokingly saying "i'm going up on the hill and see if something is there". There was. A ball of light was there as i walked out from behind an apple tree. About twenty feet up and about eighteen inches in diameter it stood perfectly still about eighty feet from me. It seemed at the time that i'd suprised it. It sped off so fast that it disappeared nearly instantaneously to the west. I thought it'd gone behind a tree limb. It seemed to me it "knew" i was there. It was aware. For several weeks i saw many "lights". They hid behind trees. They imitated planes. They followed tree limbs as i watched them through binoculars. Everyone thought i was crazy. I can't forget it. Ten years went by and i was talking about it with my wife and she'd forgotten it. She won't talk about it. She said she dosn't remember anything about it, yet she was there. The second time we saw the bright lights behind the trees, i felt we were being hypnotised and i actually covered her eyes with my hand saying "don't look!", just an instinct, i guess...My father saw them one night and said it was just an airplane, but i'd been watching them for a half hour and just before he spotted them, one of them turned on a flashing light and impersonated an airplane. It was very frustrating. I can't say how many "lights" i saw, or when, or if it ended....
Date is approximate.  PD