Espers that increase Strength

I've been playing through i90east's expert version 2 revision of FF6. It certainly lives up to its name. In fact some monsters have been made overkill - particularly the ghosts in phantom forest which cast X-zone and another fire spell that one-shot kills a party member at that stage in the game. Also you can't run away from them. The only way to get past it was to save and reload over and over and get past the final two screens without having a random encounter (in which case the player is confronted with 5 ghosts instead of the usual 1; took me two hours). I'm guessing the creator managed to get through without having a 5 ghost encounter.

Anyway - because of the difficulty I've been taking early advantage of equipping specific espers at level-up to mold characters toward specific ends and I've noticed one, Unicorn, that has the indication "At level up...Strength +1." However in the status screen there is not a Strength stat. And I can tell that battle power isn't increasing. So are these type espers doing anything at level up?

Furthermore if anyone has advice on what stats characters would be best suited to increase I'd be happy to hear it. I'm guessing one character should get a lot of attention from the HP +10% and Strength (if it does anything) in order to eventually wield the Atma weapon and another weapon with a genji glove and offering. I can't remember which characters can wield it though.

also: !MOGFACE! :mog:

Vigor is Strength
Try using phoenix down on the ghost if you have them
I dont know about what stats top give who, but i hear most of sabin's blitzes are based on magic stat