The "vanishing star"

I have observed some strange stuff in the sky that I'd like to talk about. My most recent was last night. First of all, though, let me tell you about a couple of times I had observed something in the night sky over Lake Michigan. All of the objects that I want to tell about are starlike, & that's where the similarities end. The first observation that I made was back in the summer of 2013. I was at an observation deck with a friend of mine. I started noticing some lights appearing in the sky, which didn't have a trace of cloudiness to it. They had slowly started to fade into darkness. Then, I was really hoping that another one would show up so so instead of me just explaining about it, he could see it for himself. So, we waited some more, and that is when another one showed up, I would say, at least a couple minutes after the first objects did. So I told him that there's another one and pointed to it. It looked just like a satellite, and it was decent in terms of brightness. Then, again, this object slowly faded away. In fact, he told me that there were some other objects he had observed at about the same time that had faded away.
The second observation I had made was of something that had looked like a star, or satellite, except that, this time, it was stationary. It did something a little bit different than the previous ones. This night the sky was also empty of clouds. I had looked away from the object, although I had observed it long enough, so that I now had visualized it's location relative to other stars. I looked back a few seconds later, and guess what? it had gone. It was just as though the "star" had "blinked out" into darkness.
You may or may not know this... however, last night there were some interesting bright objects near the southeastern horizon. And again, the sky was clear this time. I had started observing what had looked like a couple of objects that were quite bright shortly after sunset (about 30 minutes or so) as the western sky still had those twilight hues to it. I tried to observe them through the trees. I got glimpses of them whenever I could get a clear view, although I was kind of busy at the time. They stayed in the same location. However, at least half an hour since I first tried observing them, I noticed one of them seem to start to fade out into darkness.  It wasn't like a smooth, gradual kind of fading out. And it wasn't like what a plane might look like. It would first fade for about one and a half to two seconds until it was practically invisible. Then, it would reemerge. Afterwards, it would fade out again, although each time that it did so, the timing seemed to be different. You know, sometimes it would fade quicker, other times slower. The other one, however, was gone, even though I had observed it as being in the same location much of the time. I had basically assumed that it was a star because it seemed to be stationary. A plane? maybe. Chinese lantern? well, the object- in fact, both of them- were white. And although one might think the description might account for this, there is a problem that needs to be addressed in this situation. The object did not Flicker. It had faded. And, in addition, once the object would fade away, it was invisible for at least a good one and a half seconds, unlike a Chinese lantern. Anyways, when I had observed these objects I was near Eaton Rapids, MI.
Tonight, I am going to observe the sky again, to see if I can observe the objects again near the Eastern horizon. You should take a look outside as well.