This may sound like the craziest thing you will ever read or hear about and that’s okay. It’s not important. It is something I want to document since 2025 has already turned out to be the strangest year of all time. At least in my life anyway.

Back in I believe 1989 or 1990 I was watching the 1986 Chinese series called Journey to the West on the locally owned New York TV station called WYNC channel 31 or possibly on PBS Channel 13. Each episode was introduced by Maxine Hong Kingston the famous author. She had just published

I sent for the episode guide and I hope it’s in with my files in storage. Bill Moyers vaguely shows up in my memory as he I think was also doing a general introduction. Moyers was doing a series on Chinese medicine at the time. I wrote to him about my doctoral dissertation in 1995 and he wrote back. Alas, my mother’s mind succumbed to Alzheimer’s and multi-infarct dementia just as I defended my dissertation and my career trajectory it the ground and stayed down for a long time.

The series struck a memory I just could not dredge up. All I knew was I was hooked and Sun Wukong became something of an obsession. I had to find every version of the story. I’m not as obsessed, however, as my pen pal, Jim R. McClanahan, nor the actor who is considered the ultimate Monkey King, Zhang Jinlai,章金莱, stage name, Liu Xiao Ling Tong (六小龄童; ‘Little Six Year Old Child’), who has an entire museum dedicated to Sun Wukong which Yugene Lee shares in her video.

I don’t have a shrine, um yet, to Sun Wukong who has shrines all over Asia (one is in Bangkok, this one Jim describes).

So back to why I’m doing this series. In July 2024, Sun Wukong showed up in a dream. That’s pretty special, but nothing compared to my housemate telling me that a hairy tall being was in the house with us.

I wrote to my friend Jim in Taipai and asked if he had EVER heard of someone who had Sun Wukong show up in his/her house? I can’t see him, but my new housemate can. He can hear him as well. Sun Wukong, assuming it is he, I can sense him, but not see, nor hear him. Jim hasn’t seen my message yet. I hope we stay friends after he reads this!

Okay, what? My housemate was staying with my other housemate and myself because he had broken up with his fiancė, although they got back together at Christmas. It was November 7, 2024 a week after Halloween. Alex came in my room to ask me a question and as he was talking something was making him sneeze and he finally lost his temper and yelled at the entity standing next to him who was blowing dust on him. I know. It sounds wacka doodle. I wanted to concentrate on our conversation and I could sense something in the room so I ordered whatever it was to go to the other side of the room and sit the BLEEP down. It did. Alex stopped sneezing and said the being looked subdued.

The description was of a kind of werewolf or hairy anthropomorphic being. Not wanting to think about it, we went about the evening’s chores. A few days later, I was in a LOT of pain. The being showed up again and this time I wanted a better description. We went to my computer and for some strange reason I pulled up images of Sun Wukong. Alex let out a gasp and the being then said yes that was he and he was here because he owes me a favor. HUH? How on EARTH could a deity owe me a favor.

Assuming it IS or WAS Sun Wukong the being told my housemate, I am – this is cray cray- I am a reincarnation of Bai Long Ma (Chinese: 白龍馬) son of Ao Run (敖闰) or Ao Ji (敖吉), the Dragon King of the West Sea (西海龙王, Xīhǎi Lóngwáng)! There is more to the story but no one will believe either of us so I’ll omit it and let you all sit happily in your homes with the odd spider or fly and pretend there is no such thing as other realms or beings or multiple universes or paranormal this or that or ghosts or fae or fictional characters who might not be fictional at all.

Oddly enough, Bâi Long Ma was my favorite character and I was born in the year of the Horse. My dad played polo and was a stunt rider. I love horses.

At some point I’ll throw in the story about seeing the dragon that lives in the Rubies. And in case you’re thinking this is the craziest caca you’ve read in a long time, I have two other friends who can see the beings that hang around me. And each is perfectly sane. Both are business women. Both are perfectly normal. They just happen to be psychic. Both insist I am not like anything they’ve ever seen. What’s even trippier I can see Alex’s past lives as if they were movies playing in my head and he can remember them. These abilities are not rare. In India they are talked about. On TikTok people are coming out of the shadows and talking about the paranormal on CAMERA! I’m not that brave.