One of the largest comets of the 19th century suddenly appears just weeks before the Battle of Bull Run. Stonewall Jackson's sword mysteriously falls only hours before his fatal wounding at Chancellorsville. As a boy, Ulysses S. Grant has his head examined at a county fair and is told that he will someday become president of the United States. A soldier carves his headstone as a joke, only to be killed hours later. Colonel Warren Akin of Georgia dreams of his son lying unconscious and bleeding—two days later, his son is thrown from a horse and dies. Are all of these happenings mere coincidences? Strange Tales of the Civil War provides readers with such omens, predictions, dreams, and other unexplainable events of the Civil War.