Gold Buttons
A Reader Submission by Meaghan Timko
Southerly Gothic is shaped not only by the legends we inherit, but by the stories readers carry with them.
Marietta is a Metro Atlanta community with deep Civil War history. In this reader submission, Meaghan Timko remembers the imaginary friends her toddler met in a home built beside a Civil War-era hospital, and the detail that made them impossible to dismiss.
The first time I can recall acknowledging that someone else was with us was on September 15, 2009.
My daughter, Katie Grace, then just toddler, was full of energy fighting naptime. It was just the two of us at home that day and I was ready to let the steady rhythm of the historical downpour put her to sleep.
As I got her pajamas ready, I looked over to her window. She had her face pressed up against the glass watching the torrential downpour outside. As she pulled her face away, she left her tiny hands up to keep her balance. Her big blue eyes were reflecting off the cascading flow of water outside and she seemed to be focused on something on the ground floor, bringing her face close again to the window and scanning the small front yard. I was nervously texting my husband that he should hurry home, that this rain seemed different, and peculiar. My senses were heightened about weather after a particularly intense tornado season and everything about the moment felt strange. Like being a spectator in someone else’s moment. As I was about to make another call to beckon him home, Katie Grace turned around and looked towards me, then past me, as if looking AT someone else, waved and said “hi!”
When my husband Dan and I first got married, we lived the typical ITP life. His circle of friends from Georgia Tech lived in and around us in Vinings. We spent beautiful days in town, hiking around the ‘Hooch, hanging out in Piedmont Park, and dreaming of moving to a house in the suburbs and starting a family.
The housing boom of the early 2000’s crept into areas of Atlanta that had previously been forgotten. Land plots were sold off to developers who were in search of a place to build fast, dense homes in close enough proximity to Atlanta and Hartsfield to feel like they were part of the city, but far enough away to harness to power of the suburban magnet that attracted new, young families outside the perimeter.
Our new activity had become wandering into cities like Marietta, trying to find “the one”. We were ecstatic to stumble upon a small neighborhood of new construction. Row house style townhouses that were wrapped in a giant horseshoe around a hidden gated mansion. It seemed very odd, but the woman from the sales office was quick to address the elephant in the room as I stared through the gate at the timeless home shrouded in trees and shade. “Well, it used to be a restaurant, and before that a family lived there for many decades, and before that it was . . .. “And her voice trailed off searching for an answer. I got a bit uneasy in the silence, and she finally said, “you don’t have to worry, it’s a fixture here, it made it through the burning of Atlanta in the Civil War,” she said proudly.
That was all Dan, my history obsessed husband needed to hear. “That is so cool, it’s been here since the Civil War?”
And she had him hook, line, and sinker before I could even think twice.
The deck of our townhouse faced the side of the hidden property, towards the front of the façade. We’d sit out back at night talking or hanging out with our new neighbors. We’d get caught in spooky stories about the vacant property, which had been unoccupied for several months after we moved in during the winter of 2006. “Oh, y’all didn’t know? It was a hospital during the Civil War. There was even a battle here, right under out feet. There are bullets stuck in the clay all over this development,” our next-door neighbor told us that night.
Come again? Civil War hospital? Battlefield? Bullets?
“So, people, uh, died. All over this place?” I did not like this story at all.
“Yeah. Maybe we should try and talk to some of the ghosts. BOO!!” said one of my neighbors. And, just as he was about to say something else a giant branch from a magnolia tree broke off and fell to the ground. We all freaked out.
“That’s it, I’m done for the night, y’all have a good time with the Civil War soldiers” and I went up to what was, at the time, the guest bedroom and Katie Grace’s future nursery. They continued to carry on, under our main bedroom, and I needed to sleep peacefully.
I tossed and turned a bit thinking about the old mansion. The supposed battle that my friend said had taken place. The thought of bullets flying through the air and bodies lying all around where my house now stood. Of men being rushed into this home turned hospital on stretchers carried by their fellow soldiers, bleeding out, and dying. As my thoughts wandered through the dark, I felt like someone was in the room with me telling me not to freak out. The feeling became so heavy that I was afraid to open my eyes, so I jammed them shut and said quietly, “go away”. I swear someone whispered back, “shhhhh.”
Was this place haunted?
The next day I woke up and did a dive into what little information existed on the internet at the time. It was called the 1848 House and was indeed a structural survivor of the Burning of Atlanta. Its status as a Federal hospital during the Civil War had been its savior during Shermans march through Marietta and the Atlanta Campaign. Men had died there and all around it. My neighborhood had been a battle ground, a place of refuge, and the final resting place of scores of men fighting on the Union side of the war. The internet had claims of haunting, sightings, and ghostly encounters in the surrounding acres of this old plantation home.
I lived in a haunted place.
Katie Grace was an early talker. She went from a couple words to full sentences to engaging conversations well before her time. It’s what made her such a fun toddler. She’d talk to the cashier at Target or the man checking us out at the Kroger about the sunshine, her toys, or just ask a million questions. She started attending preschool at the Presbyterian Church in Marietta Square when she was 18 months old and her teachers would always have a full report of the hilarious things she would say at the end of the day.
One idle October day her teacher, Ms. Holly, came up to me and said, “I feel silly asking this because I think I know the answer, but does Katie Grace have a brother, maybe his name is Shay?”
I was puzzled because she was our only child at the time, and she had no cousins yet. The only kids she knew were in her class.
“No, why?”
“Well, she keeps talking about a friend that lives with her and it sounds like Shay or maybe something like that . . . “
I could tell she was doubting herself now, scrolling back through her own memory, trying to put together exactly what she’d heard.
“I’m sure it’s just Katie Grace talking up a storm about a show or something she saw in passing,” and I put it to rest.
Except, that was just the beginning. As her speech rapidly developed, we too started hearing her talk about a friend. A friend that lived in our house.
At first it was a little song she would sing as she scooted down the stairs on her bottom every morning. She would sing the same little jingle, look next to her, like she was looking AT someone, and giggle. She would only sing it once a day, so we tried every morning to hear it clearly. And through days and weeks of trying to discern what she was saying, we finally heard it one day. I remember it like it was yesterday. I looked at her, and I said, “Are you saying Kingosay?”
“YES MOMMY! KING-GO-SAY!!!!” and she clapped and giggled and said it repeatedly. “Kingosay! Kingosay!”
She was beside herself with happiness that we had identified the words in her song. I knelt beside her, closed my eyes, held my breath, and said, “Does Kingosay live with us?”
And she came close to my ear and whispered, “yes.”
My husband and I had a lot of conversations about Kingosay. What do we do? Do we entertain this? Is Kingosay some kid in another class? Is this an imaginary friend?
We landed on imaginary friend. It felt innocent enough and I too had an imaginary friend in my toddler years, so it wasn’t far-fetched that my child had one as well. With a little hesitation, we allowed Kingosay to exist in our everyday life.
Katie Grace would coach us on how to interact with Kingosay. “Tell him good morning, Mommy!’
“Good morning Kingosay, hope you had a good rest last night.”
“Kingosay wants to ride to school today,” she’d say randomly.
“Ok Katie Grace. Kingosay can ride to school today.”
This went on for a few months. Every now and then, he’d disappear for a few days, and we’d look at each other and have that silent eye conversation only parents can have, “is he gone?”
After one streak of absence, Kingosay returned. Katie Grace was in her room playing tea party. I was laying down in my room for a moment. I was pregnant with our second child and feeling the exhaustion of the first trimester. I could hear her sorting through her teacups and play food, and then she said, “one for you, and one for your friend.”
I sat up and listened closer.
“Here for you Kingosay, and here for you, your friend,” she sang a little bit and giggled. I went into the room, sat down, and calmly asked, “who is here at the tea party today?”
“Kingosay, Mommy!” and then, “And his friend.”
“Does his friend have a name?”
“Yes, his name is Goshen. He was hungry. And it’s cold outside, so he wore his coat.”
It was cold outside that day; in fact, it was sprinkling a little bit of snow. The jacket made sense in the eyes of a 2-year-old. But I had a funny feeling akin to the one I had a few years before when I was trying to fall asleep in that same room. So, I joined in the tea party. I asked more questions, and I got details. The jacket was blue. It had gold buttons. It was his only jacket.
When my husband came home that evening, I gave him the news that we now had two imaginary friends. Kingosay had brought his friend Goshen, who wore a blue jacket with gold buttons. Dan turned on his heel and asked me to say that all over again.
“Katie Grace said Goshen has a blue jacket, with gold buttons.”
Dan went downstairs immediately, and I could hear the clicking of the computer keyboard for a minute, then the printer going. He came back up with a picture and went straight to Katie Grace.
“Sweetie Mommy told me about Kingosay’s friend Goshen. Tell me, does Goshen’s jacket look like this?”
“YES DADDY! THAT IS GOSHEN’S JACKET!” She jumped up and down, looked up at the celling where her room was and said, “Goshen my daddy has a picture of you!”
None of this made sense, so I quickly walked over and moved my body around to where Dan was holding the picture out to Katie Grace and what I saw staring back at me was a picture of a random Union Soldier. In his Union Solider uniform.
A blue jacket, with gold buttons.
Three months went by. Our growing family needed more space, and we found a new perfect house near Marietta Square. It was convenient to preschool, to our friends, to our church, and most of all, it didn’t have a haunted house in the back yard.
We taped up the last of the boxes on moving day. Katie Grace was excited about her big girl room in the new house. We walked her through and said farewell to our first home. As we went through her nursery one last time she looked around in a very reflective way. I think Dan and I were both thinking the same thing, “are these ghosts coming with us,” but neither one of us could say it out loud. So, we waited and watched her for a minute. She looked up at us, then back at the room and said, “Bye-bye Kingosay. Bye-bye Goshen.”
We never heard about them again.
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