Katie was told her son would never speak. Then she realised he was reading her mind.

Katie, a mother of five who had left an abusive relationship, had given up hope when her eldest son, Houston, was diagnosed with severe, non-speaking autism.

"Every year, there's a whole other set of psychology tests and exams and evaluations to reinforce that, if you haven't already given up, you need to," Katie recalled on The Telepathy Tapes podcast.

But little did she know, Houston was about to renew her belief in miracles.

Watch: Waleed Aly discusses autism on The Project. Post continues after video.

One evening, when Houston was 17, Katie came home from working her third job, utterly drained. She lay on the couch, desperate for rest, when Houston approached her — a rare occurrence. Usually in constant motion, Houston sat still at her feet.

"He tugged at the blanket, just like you would to get someone's attention, and he said, 'Mama,'" she told podast host Ky Dickens.

"I was shocked. I had never, ever heard my son say my name. I opened my eyes, and he was looking directly into my eyes, which he had also never done, and he said, 'I love you.' I was speechless."

It was a turning point for Katie.

"I was essentially given this opportunity. I could keep not believing that there was any hope, or I could believe in a miracle. And so I decided, in that moment, I was going to believe in a miracle," she said.

So, with renewed hope, Katie met with a psychologist who introduced her to something called Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), a communication technique that allows non-speaking individuals to express themselves using a letter board. It was slow, tedious, and required an extraordinary amount of patience, but Katie and Houston worked tirelessly.

At 21, Houston wrote his first full sentence: "I'm in here."

"I sat there in shock," Katie said. 

As Houston's communication improved, Katie began noticing his extraordinary connection to the world around him — particularly through stones.

It started when a friend gifted Katie three stones, claiming she'd prayed over them. Katie was sceptical at first, but when Houston burst into her bathroom and started chanting, "Stones! Stones! Stones!" she gave them to her son.

From that day on, Houston's fascination with stones grew. He lined them up in precise arrangements and even claimed he could feel their energy.

"When you're autistic, you're a magnet for all energy. Good and bad," Houston explained through his letterboard. "These stones have good energy. I need more good energy."

Katie leaned into Houston's passion, even discovering that stones do emit measurable frequencies.

"When I started doing some investigating, I found out that stones have a very unique set of traits," she explained.

"They have piezoelectric energy, which means it can transmit mechanical to electrical energy, and electrical to mechanical. I found out that each stone actually has a hertz that can actually be measured."

After doing her own research, the host confirmed this. "The fact that Houston is more keyed into these frequencies may be a clue [as to] how and why telepathy is possible," she said.

"He's experiencing essentially a greater spectrum of the electromagnetic spectrum. He could feel all these different wavelengths."

It began to make sense — Houston seemed attuned to a spectrum most of us couldn't perceive.

As Houston continued to surprise Katie, the biggest revelation came when he casually announced, "I can hear thoughts."

Katie didn't believe her son one bit, so she tested him — asking him a question in her head. He answered it. She then asked her other kids to do the same. Every time, Houston knew exactly what they were thinking.

Houston can't remember a time when he couldn't read thoughts — and incredibly, he also said that this ability isn't unique to him.

"He says that everyone with non-speaking and unreliably speaking autism have this ability," said Katie.

However, there's a catch: anxiety can block Houston's telepathic abilities. When he is stressed or anxious, the connection cuts off, particularly in large groups of people when he can't decipher whose thoughts are whose.

Along with neuroscientist Dr Powell, podcast host Ky wanted to witness Houston's ability firsthand. So they conducted some tests.

For the first test, the doctor generated a number then leaned over to show Ky. The number was 2,220. Without seeing the number, Houston then pointed at the correct numbers on his black letterboard. They did this multiple times, and he got it right every time.

They then conducted written tests. Ky would hand the doctor a book, she would open to a random page and show Katie the word or phrase. Katie would read it out in her head, and Houston repeated it on his letterboard.

The tests went on and on, and Houston was correct every single time. 

Katie has since connected with other parents in Atlanta who've had similar experiences with their non-speaking kids. Houston describes this network of telepathic communication as 'The Talk on the Hill.'

The don't need to be in the same room — or even the same zip code — to communicate, said Katie. It's as though they tune into the same radio channel in their minds.

"They teach each other, they share information, they give hope to those who are being discouraged," she said. "They pray for each other. And yes, it is telepathic. That might seem extraordinary, but… like phones and computers, we don't have to be in the same room or zip code, and that's because it's electromagnetic energy."

The day that a 17-year-old Houston approached Katie with a single word changed everything for the mother-of-five. From that point, she was determined to give her son a voice — and that's what she's been doing every day since.

"I'd been given one little moment of miraculous, and that's what I wanted for my whole life," she said. "I wanted to know my son, and if he could sit there and look me in the eyes, say my name and tell me that he loved me, I knew there was hope."

Feature Image: Getty.