I've been listening to your program for about three years now, and I finally decided I needed to call in about this. Because what happened to me, I know how it's going to sound. But it happened. And I think other people need to know it's possible. That's just how I see it. This was in the summer of 1993. July, specifically. I was living alone in a rental house on the edge of Crestview. Small place, two bedrooms, but it had this great sunroom on the south side. Big windows, good light. I'd set up all my houseplants in there. I've always kept plants. My mother did, her mother did. It's just something I've always done. I had maybe fifteen plants in that room. Mostly common stuff, pothos, spider plants, a rubber tree. And I had this Boston fern I'd bought from a nursery about eight months earlier. Healthy plant. Nothing special about it, or so I thought. I kept it on a stand near the east window.
The first time I noticed something was off, it was early in the morning. Maybe six thirty, just after sunrise. I'd gone into the sunroom to water everything before work. I had my routine. I'd start on the left side of the room and work my way around. When I got to the fern, I reached out to touch the soil, check if it needed water. And the fronds moved. Not like a breeze was blowing. The windows were all open for ventilation. They pulled back. Away from my hand. Like it was recoiling from me. I stood there for a minute, just watching it. The fronds slowly relaxed back to their normal position. I figured maybe I'd bumped the stand, created some vibration. So I reached out again, slower this time. Same thing. The fronds pulled back, just slightly, before I even touched them. Like the plant could sense my hand coming.
Over the next few weeks, it got more pronounced. The fern would react when I entered the room. Not dramatically. It wasn't thrashing around or anything like that. But the fronds would shift. Orient themselves toward me when I came in. Follow me as I moved through the space. I started testing it. I'd come in from different angles, different times of day. The response was consistent. If I approached from the left, the fronds on that side would shift first. From the right, same thing. It was tracking me. I know plants respond to stimuli. They grow toward light, roots grow toward water. But this felt different. This felt like awareness. Like the plant knew I was there. The other plants in the room showed no response at all. I'd wave my hands near them, approach them the same way. Nothing. It was only the fern.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]