Weird experience while flying

Okay, I have given much thought to whether or not I want to post this, something that I have never told anyone for fear of ridicule, in fact sometimes I think I may be crazy too. What happened was so bizarre and out of the ordinary that I will not be surprised if people think I am a troll or totally insane, but I have to get this off my chest even if i get laughed out of here.
I am a commercial pilot and I have thousands of hours of flight time, and I have never encountered anything unusual, flying or otherwise, that I cannot identify, with one very notable exception.

I want to stay anonymous because coming out and saying what I am about to say could have very negative consequences for my career and I may even lose my medical for being declared legally insane or something. I only found these forums today. My experience is even more strange because it is nothing like the experiences that I have read about in here so far.

The incident actually happened about a decade ago, when I was a student pilot in Washington State. I was flying my solo long cross country, which is one of the requirements for obtaining a basic private pilot certificate At the time I was 19 years old, college student as well as a student pilot, it was the summer of 1998. I took off from an airport near the Seattle area, and the first leg of the flight took me to the Pacific Coast, then I was to fly along the coast up the Olympic Peninsula, stop at a town on the north end of the peninsula, then make a water crossing up to the San Juan Islands over about 40 miles of open water, then fly back to the the airport I departed from. The aircraft I was flying was a Piper Cherokee Warrior.

It was a beautiful sunny summer day with a few clouds when I left, and the first leg of the trip happened without incident. I was not in radio contact most of the time except with the flight service station to open my flight plan and check the weather. By the time I got over the water portion of my flight it was late afternoon, and that is when the incident happened. I saw out of the corner of my eye at about the 8o clock position above my flight level, four crescent shaped objects, each had a yellowish green light on its underside.

These were not flying saucers, more like flying crescents or the flying wing shape we are familiar with in the stealth aircraft design, except they were not black, they were a very shiny, glossy, metallic color, with the greenish yellow or yellowish green lights underneath, the back was also curved and not at angles like the stealth aircraft. They followed me, from their first position they came in below me, then darted away. I thought they were gone but then I saw they were above me. At first I rationalized and thought I was tired, that I had strayed into Canadian Airspace or something and maybe they were military interceptors and I was hallucinating. But the closer I looked I realized they were too exotic to be conventional military aircraft, and they would hover in one position pacing my aircraft and then dart away very fast. I tried to get in contact with the flight service station but I was apparently out of range, in fact all I got was static when I tried several other frequencies. Then they disappeared, but I was a little spooked, and I was anxious to get back.

However, that was not the end of it, suddenly I noticed a giant cylindrical shaped object pacing me above my aircraft. It looked like a blimp/airship but was a little longer and thinner then a blimp, and it was also shiny and metallic. Then it disappeared as fast as it showed up and I continued on my journey. But that is not the end of it at all. What happened next was even more bizarre. I did not see another one of these craft again, but we are supposed to keep track of our time and position when we are flying, and I looked at my time and I was an HOUR AND 40 MINUTES BEHIND SCHEDULE!!!

Fortunately at that time of year in Washington the days are long, but I nearly panicked and was finally able to get in contact with the flight service station, but my first priority was to revise my flight plan. It is a good thing I did because the briefer told me they were about to send out a search and rescue, and proceeded to lecture me for not informing them sooner of a change in schedule(fortunately I also put in a 45 minute margin of error, which is typically done by pilots on a VFR flight plan). Even though the hobbs meter and the tach read "normal" i.e. no extra time on the engine, I was also worried about fuel, but there was no extra fuel burn, certainly not an hour and 40 minutes worth.

Needless to say I was happy to land and really tried hard to just forget the whole thing. I told no one, not even my flight instructor(I did want a career in aviation after all).

After this sighting, it did seem to affect my psychological health. I had difficulty sleeping at night after what happened. I would jump up in the night on my bed in a cold sweat, or even wake up screaming so loud it woke up the whole house. I don't know if this has anything to do with what I think I saw or it is another part of me going crazy, but it never happened before that I can remember. Well, I told you it was strange. Unfortunately it gets even stranger, with some recent dreams I have had(a decade after the incident), but I will not go further for now because people here probably already think I am a nut or simply lying. I am saying this to get off my chest as much as anything regardless of what people will accuse me of. The main reason I am even thinking about it again are the crazy dreams I am beginning to have.