Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving as the country’s leader through its bloodiest conflict on its own soil, the American Civil War. He is also remembered for abolishing slavey, modernizing the U.S. economy, and preserving the Union. Not as widely known is that Lincoln had an interest in spiritualism and the supernatural.

Having lost two children at young ages, Lincoln’s wife Mary frequently invited mediums to the White House to hold seances, some of which were attended by Lincoln himself. Though he seemed to contend that most mediums were hucksters, Lincoln did believe in the power of dreams to predict the future. He even had an alarmingly accurate dream (unbeknownst to him, of course) in which he walked through several rooms of the White House to the sound of crying, before discovering a dead shrouded body lying in state. Dream-Lincoln asked a nearby soldier to whom the body belonged; the soldier replied it was the President, murdered by an assassin.

Lincoln also encountered what he believed to be another ill omen regarding his fate, when he glimpsed his deathly pale doppelgänger looking at him from a mirror. One of Lincoln’s associates, Noah Brooks, recounted the story the president allegedly told to him on November 9, 1864. Brooks's version of the tale, using Lincoln’s words as best as he remembered them, described the following events:

“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great "hurrah, boys," so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler — say five shades — than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a "sign" that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”