Adding to the Sutton Place intrigue...

... is the fact that, at the time Strieber was writing The Hunger (the early 1980s) the then-occupant of the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations was one Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi Stormtrooper. Whilst I am aware this is not a 'research blog', forgive me if I mention, if only in passing, the parallels between vampire mythology and National Socialism. Both place very high status on 'blood' and racial purity; have a close affinity with occult traditions; and exhort a creed of violence, tempered by a certain nobility. The iconography of both have been absorbed into popular culture, and imbued with sexual glamour.

Whilst I doubt Strieber had any of these associations in mind, the fictional location of his vampire den is highly appropriate. It is interesting, too, that Mr Waldheim's successor in Sutton Place was Javier Perez de Cueller, UN Secretary-General from 1982 to 1992. His career entwined with Strieber's, if very tangentially, when he was named (unofficially, by Budd Hopkins) as the high-ranking politician who witnessed the abduction by aliens of Linda Napolitano (aka Linda Cortile) in 1989. This, the so-called 'Brooklyn Bridge Abduction', is probably the most sensational case of its type, and would certainly have been very well known to Strieber, whose initial regressions were conducted by Hopkins, and whose famous memoir, Communion was published just two years before the Cortile case came to light.

There is a very good article about the Cortile abduction here:

http://www.philipcoppens.com/cortile.html

By the way, most of my pre-cog moments are to do with pop culture too. I had one this morning, in fact: for no apparent reason, or none at all, a memory entered my mind a couple of days ago about a TV quiz show I used to watch on occasional afternoons when not at school. The memory in question concerned the irritating catch-phrase of the host of the show, one Matthew Kelly, who used to describe contestants lagging behind as 'playing catch-up.' Neither the host nor the phrase are staple components of the culture in Britain; and, as with your Michael J Fox synch- who, by the way, I also thought about last night apropos of nowt- I am not aware of having read or seen anything regarding in the hours or days before. Then, this morning, I wander into a local greasy spoon cafe for my habitual fry-up, and happen to notice that the television is tuned to a semi-obscure satellite channel. On the screen is the revived Going For Gold, the same show whose host (and catch-phrase) I had thought about so recently, only now in a revamped format including a younger female presenter.

Actually, I wish my pre-cog was tuned in to events a little higher on the frequency band, like current affairs, geopolitics, or lottery numbers... Any thoughts about how we could put these talents to greater use?