I volunteer to supervised children in a group home. I see things most people can’t.

I’m the guy your parents warns you about. You know, the one who will pull up in a nice shiny car offering you treats, job offers, anything to lure you into it. But once you take a bite of your Snickers and hop in the passenger seat you can’t get out. The doors and windows are locked, the car accelerates and the rest is history.<br><br>Except that’s not what I do. I’m not a creepy pedophile trying to kidnap you. Although the last part about not being able to escape is the same. <br><br>I volunteer at a group home. I answer directly to the home owner, Shelly. Good lady, probably the nicest woman I’ve ever met. She’s in her late 50s and has run an array of different group homes over the years. From juvenile delinquents to victims of domestic abuse, she’s worked with them all. <br><br>This is a little different. I only see things that most people can’t, just like Shelly. She doesn’t tell me where she finds them, but she houses children who also have this gift.<br><br>We call it being an Shaker. <br><br>Each month I help house an average of four new kids. The longest staying resident has been here for a little under a year. Most stay a couple of weeks, other stay for a couple of hours. There’s no way to predict how long any of them will last. A nurse comes once a day to check on everyone, but I’m usually the one who finds the bodies. <br><br>We have an average of three to four deaths every month. It’s not something we can change, so we’ve learned to live with it. <br><br>As long as I can remember I’ve been able to see the Shaking. When I was five my parents took me on a family vacation to Disney World. It was Shelly who working there at the time. I don’t remember her specifically, but that’s what she said when I was old enough to remember the story about the day she recruited me. <br><br>I remember a couple of things that stood out from that vacation:<br><br>1. The lines were crazy, and my younger brother was a little asshole, so we spent a lot of time away from the rides trying to calm him down. I remember wishing we’d all just left already. A couple of rides wasn’t worth cooling off in the heat on the concrete for almost ten hours a day. <br><br>2. I saw a couple having sex on the Pirates of the Caribbean. They were sitting in front of us, which was easy to notice being that the man had his hands up the woman’s sundress. I remember being confused at first. I was too young to understand what the couple next to us on the ride was doing, but my father was irate. He had sent my brother and I away while he dealt with it, but it wasn’t until I was older that I learned they had been both been deceased for years. Most people won’t see them. I see a flash of light, a little bit of movement, but once I actually look closer it’s gone. But in a theme park there are so many people walking around it’s impossible to notice that a few of them aren’t actually there. <br><br>That’s what the Shaking is. It’s a flash of light, but then the light is gone and in the light spot is a person or an object. You can’t see the person or understand what they’re doing until you focus on them, but once you actually look they’re gone. The only ones we can actually see are the ones who don’t move. Like the couple on the ride, who were just sitting doing their own thing, or a little girl who plays with her Barbie in one of the rooms at the house. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to see it, the flash of light is impossible to ignore. <br><br>There are Shakers, and there are Observers. Shelly calls me an observer, and a little over half the kids can see what I can see. The other half of kids at the home can only see the flash of light. <br><br>Snow is the exception to all of this. <br><br>Snow is the only child I’ve ever met who can communicate with the Shakers. <br><br>He’s been at the home for almost three years now, and he’s the reason that we can afford to house these children for so long. Snow has been with Shelly for over a decade now, and that entire time he’s been the cause of her fortune. <br><br>Do you ever hear those TLC or Discovery Channel stories of kids who have a past life? That’s what they’re talking about. Snow has a past life, and Shelly uses him to find missing treasures and money, make future business investments, etc. Snow has a real name, but we’ve never met anyone who knows it. When he was a little boy he couldn’t remember his name, so he told Shelly he’d think about it until he came up with one. He never did, so Shelly started calling him Snow because he refused to sleep in anything other than the snowman pajamas she had bought for him. <br><br>As of last year Snow is about five foot ten, so those pajamas are long gone, but his name has stuck around. <br><br>Despite the fact that we house children, Shelly and I are the only people who work at the home. Other than two of the kids, neither of us have real names either. But this is a good thing. <br><br>One the kids who has a real name is Jeanna. The other is Victoria. <br><br>Victoria is one of the Shakers. <br><br>It started a few weeks ago, and a few weeks is a long time for a child to last. Shelly and I usually find them in parking lots and side streets. Forests. Beaches. We found one in a ditch behind a McDonald’s restaurant once. The last one we found was in a playground. <br><br>We never know where we’ll find them, but we know when we will. <br><br>I wasn’t the one who found Victoria. I found Snow as a little boy myself back in 2009. Shelly and I work together, and we do a lot of traveling to find these children. We remember every face we find, to make sure we don’t pick up the same child twice. It’s easier if we split the work load, and we both have a good understanding of what to look for. <br><br>We only pick up a child if they have The Look. We can’t really describe it, it’s like calling someone who is just hot. You know it when you see it. It’s something in their eyes. <br><br>Victoria didn’t have The Look when Shelly picked her up in August of 2015. She had been found in a Walmart, sitting in the shopping cart of a mother who had lost her own child years ago. Shelly said the mother was rocking back and forth, calling out Victoria’s name, and just talking to her like she was really there. <br><br> Shelly stayed in the store long enough to figure out what had happened to the mother’s daughter. Victoria had fallen down the stairs. It was an accident, and the mother had been in mourning for almost ten years. Shelly decided she should let the mother be happy again, even if it was only for a short time. <br><br>I remember when Shelly brought Victoria home. The mother was holding her hand, looked happy, and they were both smiling. Victoria was three. <br><br>That was ten years ago. She’s thirteen now Shelly is dead. <br><br>That’s what started everything, Shelly bringing home the child who didn’t have The Look. Shelly is dead now, and I don’t think she would have died if she hadn’t brought Victoria home. Or maybe I would have died? Maybe we all would have died? <br><br>I don’t know, but I understand why Shelly did it now. <br><br>I was in the living room when it happened. <br><br>I only had four kids staying with me. It was a slow month, and I was starting to get a little worried that Shelly had gone out looking without telling me again, but she was in the kitchen. Sometimes she gets overprotective, other times she just completely forgets that I’m an adult, too. Both of us can take care of ourselves, but she always treats me like I’m the kid she rescued all those years ago. <br><br>Snow was in his room, Jeanna was in the attic, and Victoria was in the basement. That left me alone in the living room with only two of the kids. One was a little boy we had rescued from the side of the road, the other we’d found in a parking lot. <br><br>Neither of them had names. We’d had the parking lot boy since January, but he was still young. The road boy had been here longer. We’d found him in the middle of November, and he’d been taken about a month later. He came back in April of this year. Shelly was so happy to see him, but she didn’t get to enjoy him for long. <br><br>We use foster care as a way to house the kids until we can get them. It’s not a problem if you want to foster a dozen kids, no one will bat an eye. But if you want to house a dozen foster children in the same house? Then you have problems. <br><br>That’s why we foster through so many different agencies, and that’s how we afford to keep all of these children for the amount of time that we do. Otherwise, there would be no way, even for Shelly. <br><br>We had the road boy fostered through five different agencies. He made two calls a day to each agency, assuring them that he was happy, and that he still wanted to live with us. It’s not hard to trick people into thinking an eight year old boy is calling