July 1969, two of my friends and I saw a cigar-shaped craft hovering above the tree-tops near my friend's family home.

Sometime around mid-July 1969, two of my friends and I saw a cigar-shaped craft hovering above the tree-tops near my friends family home. My friend Ricky had just turned 9 and I was 4 months shy.
Ricky's older brother Dougy was 12 or 13.  We were playing in the backyard when one or more of us noticed it above the trees across the road, adjacent to a cow pasture.  We were approximately 300 ft.
away from the craft at this time. The craft was long and had small colored lights along it's length.
Some of these lights flashed.  As it got closer we all agreed that there were windows and we could detect movement onboard and humanoid silhouettes. It hovered for awhile and then proceeded to cross the road still above the trees. At it's closest it was only 150 ft away with only an empty lot between us.  It slowly proceeded along the tree line, pausing occasionally for a moment and then continuing on.  It landed in a clearing in the woods a couple hundred yards from the house.  A place we new well near the power-lines where we used to hike and ride snow-mobiles.
 Our first thought in our excitement was: let's go see where it landed!  As we set off fear set in and we decided to walk a half mile up the road to the nearest farm house and tell an adult.  We were headed to our friend Gerald's father's farm and when we reached the edge of the yard we saw a giant fireball headed towards the earth.  It was immense and it hung in the air like it was projected somehow in the sky.  Then it suddenly disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared. We couldn't believe our luck. First we saw a UFO and now a fireball!   We told Gerald's dad exactly what we saw and he asked a lot of questions. He didn't seem to doubt the veracity of our story.  Probably because we were so excited and it was fresh in our minds. I also told my parents and my father said he believed me. I've never reported it until now. I was looking at the maps on the NUFORC website and pondering how bright the map would look if everyone reported their sightings. It took me 41 years to write it down.
After the sighting I never doubted that we were being visited by other intelligent beings. Once you see something like this you become a firm believer.  It wasn't until I read Whitley Striber's "Communion" around 15 years ago that I felt validated in a way.  Whitley reports that a number of people are subjected to "screen memories" such as images of fireballs to replace the memory of the actual encounter.  When I read this it was an "A-ha!" moment.  This is exactly what happened to us.  Except we happened to remember both the screen memory and the actual event.
Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate.  PD