Fort Mifflin’s ghost stories attach names to several different kinds of experience: a faceless figure in the casemates, cries attributed to a grieving woman, unfamiliar guides and sensations reported during organised investigations. The Philadelphia fort has a substantial military history, but its documented prisoners and buildings do not authenticate the identities assigned to those experiences. Named field accounts and a detailed historical criticism make it possible to examine how that identification process works.
A battlefield that became a prison
The fort’s official historical account distinguishes the Revolutionary War siege from its later service as a military prison. In 1777 its defenders delayed British use of the Delaware before evacuating. During the Civil War, the fort held Confederate prisoners, Union soldiers and civilians. These were different categories of prisoner, and the casemates served different purposes over time.
William H. Howe was a private in the 116th Pennsylvania Volunteers. The fort records his conviction for desertion and murder, confinement in the cell now called Casemate 11, and execution on 26 August 1864. He should not be confused with the British general of the same name associated with the earlier campaign. His punishment belongs to the fort’s human history; a later assertion that a spirit is Howe requires evidence beyond the existence of his imprisonment.
What a surviving document actually says
A public reproduction of a handwritten court-document page, presented with Kenny Biddle’s investigation, names William H. Howe and his regiment. It lists two charges, desertion and murder; records a not-guilty plea; and gives death by hanging as the punishment. A further note says that his colonel and several regimental officers sought executive clemency and commutation to imprisonment. It also mentions the Judge Advocate General’s recommendation.
This is one reproduced page, not a complete trial transcript or an independent inspection of the original archive. It does not establish every disputed circumstance of the shooting or justify describing Howe as a mass murderer or traitor. Nor does it identify a ghost. The distinction matters because a dramatic characterisation of a dead prisoner can become the assumed explanation for an unrelated photograph or sensation.
The Faceless Man and other recurring stories
In an account under his own name, investigator Dave Juliano describes the principal haunting traditions and reports leading South Jersey Ghost Research investigations at the fort. He associates a faceless, sometimes sewing figure in Casemate 5 with Billy Howe. He also relates stories of a blacksmith called Jacob, doors opening and closing, and a uniformed guide supposedly discovered not to have been an authorised reenactor.
Juliano says his investigations obtained voice recordings, motion-detector activations, electromagnetic readings and a photograph interpreted as an apparition. That is an investigator’s claim, not a reviewed experimental dataset. The page does not provide the complete timed recordings, camera originals, instrument records and environmental controls needed to assess each event independently. Its repeated character names document a shared haunting tradition; they are not independent identifications of those characters.
A reporter at an August 2009 investigation
Dana DiFilippo’s reporting, published on 1 September 2009, describes a Fort Mifflin outing on 23 August. Randy Plessor reported heaviness in a former prison space, an aftershave-like smell and speech that he attributed to an unseen presence. When he asked for an electromagnetic meter to rise in response, its numbers did not change. The party also reported a substantially colder spot near the execution location.
The article distinguishes the participants’ perceptions from what the reporter could verify. It quotes living-history volunteer Barbara Selletti and author Anthony Selletti acknowledging the difficulty of proving subjective experiences. The fort’s then executive director, Lee Anderson, welcomed the preservation income from paranormal outings while remaining sceptical himself. Hosting such an investigation was therefore not the same as an institutional finding that the fort was haunted.
Other locations also feature in that newspaper story. Their incidents have not been transferred into this case. In particular, the earlier private-house and cemetery episodes are not additional Fort Mifflin observations.
Does an experience identify Howe?
In an October 2023 interview with Kristin Hunt, paranormal host Greg O’Brien described the Faceless Man tradition but did not claim certainty that the figure was Howe. He suggested that other wartime deaths might be considered. He also recounted a guide in Civil War clothing who reportedly felt help at her elbow while descending stairs, interpreting the assistance as possibly Howe’s.
The incident itself is not dated in that interview. October 2023 is the publication date, not an invented date for the staircase experience. Nor does a feeling of assistance reveal an identity: the attribution is O’Brien’s interpretation of a reported event. His uncertainty is especially useful when compared with versions that present the Faceless Man as positively recognised. The same source discusses competing accounts of Howe’s arrest; those differences should not disappear simply because the biography has become part of a ghost tour.
Historical correction and proposed ordinary causes
Kenny Biddle’s criticism, first published in October 2013 and reposted in 2019, challenges a My Ghost Story segment. He reports consulting fort staff and documents. His objections include inaccurate building identifications, the claim that Howe faced treason and multiple murders, and stories placing Elizabeth Pratt in rooms created after her death.
His Pratt discussion needs its own qualification: he argues for yellow fever rather than suicide, but acknowledges that the cited interment entries do not list individual causes of death. That epidemiological inference should not become a quoted death certificate. Biddle also proposes long exposure and flash reflections for particular photographs, and bird calls as a possible source of screams. These are scoped explanations; no matched recording is presented that identifies every reported cry. His article is not a controlled demonstration that every experience at the fort has one cause.
Assessment and the limits of the record
The outcome is insufficient evidence for the alleged hauntings. The reviewed sources preserve named investigators, a journalist’s field account, competing interpretations and substantial historical corrections. They do not provide independently validated observations establishing an apparition or tying one to a particular deceased person. Correcting a biography does not settle every reported sound; a real prisoner’s execution does not authenticate a later figure.
The dated investigation used in the incident-year metadata is 23 August 2009. The older death dates, the 2013 television criticism and the later interview publication are not silently converted into years of paranormal encounters. Other undated traditions remain undated.
Location and visiting
Location note: the map is an approximate visitor-address reference from the fort’s official directions and its linked map destination for 6400 Hog Island Road. It does not identify the location of an apparition or promise access to a particular casemate. The fort is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, rather than across the river in New Jersey.
Fort Mifflin is a public historic attraction with admission charges and seasonal opening. Its current visitor page lists general access from March to mid-December, with other visits by prior arrangement. Check current hours, event restrictions and permitted areas before travelling. An ordinary daytime admission is not permission for an independent overnight investigation.
Image and source trail
The lead image is Seth Eastman’s 1873 painting of the actual fort, identified by the US House of Representatives collection, accession 2004.003.009. It supplies historical landscape context, not evidence of a haunting. Read the named investigators’ accounts alongside the reporter’s observations and Biddle’s criticism. This article reviewed the publicly reproduced court page; it does not claim access to the fort’s private files, the full original trial or the complete camera and instrument records.
Visit Fort Mifflin
Public historic attraction with admission charges and seasonal hours; check current official opening and event restrictions. Winter visits by prior arrangement. Day admission is not permission for an overnight investigation or entry into closed areas.
Official visitor information → · Access information checked 2026-11-13. Check current opening and booking details before travelling.
Share an experience here →Experiences at Fort Mifflin
First-person accounts shared by visitors and reviewed before publication. They are separate from the researched case above.
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