Recently there was an episode of the Ghost Hunters that took place at Fort Mifflin in Pennsylvania (See photo gallery). One of the hauntings claimed to be at the fort is a soldier by the name of William H Howe. At one point in the investigation Grant Wilson claims to see a face of a male apparition. This face is not on camera but Grant describes the face as:

• Solid
• Stubbly beard
• Long blond hair

So we here at Spectral Review thought it would be great to find a picture or a description of William H Howe to try to see if it matched with Grant’s description. The description is not detailed but we thought if we found some matching information it would be terrific.

After all the incident made Grant exclaim “Oh my gosh that freaking almost made me crap my pants!”

As all of you reading this know, we are very used to finding information like this at our fingertips. Certainly a few tinkling of the keys on the keyboard, Google will give us the answer that we seek. But not so in this case. There is a remarkable lack of information on William H Howe. Easily the few pages that do tell the story of William H Howe can be summed up with:

“He was a deserter and murderer and was hung at Fort Mifflin.”

There really isn’t anything more than that. Except one thing we found. Google books had a title of a book that was printed in 1978 entitled Stop the Evil by Robert I. Alotta. Luckily we were able to get a used copy from Amazon. There may be some left if you would like a copy of this terrific book.

Something happened on the way for our search of the description of William H Howe. We learned that his story was much more than “deserter and murderer.” We think his story needs to be told just as Dr. Alotta thought his story needed telling in 1978. We will try to give you a bit more of the circumstances of his desertion and execution in this article but suggest you get Stop the Evil and read it for yourself.

Why did Dr. Alotta entitle his book Stop the Evil? The term was used by Secretary of War E.M. Stanton referring to the problem of desertion that the Union Army was experiencing. The Army of the Potomac in which Howe served, had a total of 85,123 men who deserted. The Union army had a total of of over 250,000 desertions.

William H Howe volunteered for the 116th Regiment from Pennsylvania in August 1862. He was a young married man with two children with another on the way. He was from Perkiomenville Pennsylvania. Billy Howe was a German-American and was more comfortable speaking German than English. He most likely joined because he was barely eking out a living as a farmer supporting his wife and children.

One problem both sides in the Civil War had in common was recruiting new soldiers. By 1862 there was talk of conscription by the federal government. The choice of being drafted for an undetermined length of time was a lot worse than volunteering for a determined amount of time. Plus there were bounty incentives being offered. New recruits would be given bonuses that would ensure in their minds that their families would have money to sustain them in their absence. Unfortunately, often these bonuses were not paid. Which was the case for Howe.

Another basic problem was that minimal care was taken in the establishment of a camp. The tents were setup near latrines which were uncovered holes in the ground oftentimes located upstream of the camp. More Union soldiers died from dysentery and diarrhea than from Rebel munitions. There were so many casualties that the hospitals often couldn’t help those that were sick.

In September the 116th and Howe took the train from Philadelphia to Washinton, DC. By November 17 the 116th Pennsylvania was camped near Falmouth Virginia. This particular Virginia winter, the cold nights took it’s toll. With blankets few and shoes and clothing worn out, many men could not stand the conditions. Several men died of exposure.

On December 10th the men of the 116th were issued three days cooked rations and sixty rounds of ammunition. It was time for the 116th and Howe to face their destiny. The battle of Fredericksburg.

Unfortunately for the Union, the 116th Pennsylvania and Howe, the Rebels slaughtered the Union forces at Fredericksburg. Of the 250 or so in Howe’s Company, only 47 survived. Billy Howe did not remain with his regiment as they returned to Falmouth. He continued fighting. When he fired his issued ammunition and any other he could find, he discarded his musket and grabbed an Enfield rifle from a fallen soldiers frozen hands and continued fighting.

During the night, cries of the wounded could be heard as they lay on the battlefield hill among the dead. A lieutenant from each regiment with a small party of men was assigned the duty of climbing the hill under cover of night to aid the wounded. Edmund Randall was assigned from the 116th and Billy Howe was a member of his group. They crawled from body to body searching for fallen men of the 116th. When they did find someone alive they carried them off. If the man was dead they took his valuables to return to his family and left the body where it fell.

Howe remained until the end of the battle, helping Randell move all the wounded over the river away from Fredericksburg. His hometown of Perkiomenville must have seemed a world away.

Howe had experienced several bouts of diarrhea before the battle. After the battle his extreme diarrhea sickness returned. He tried to get help at the hospital unit in Fredericksburg but it had been destroyed. Most likely he would have been turned away anyway since there were so many casualties.

After the battle of Fredericksburg, the Union army was demoralized. Officers could and did turn in their resignations and just went home. Howe was an enlisted man and had nothing to resign. He was stuck. One of the people to resign was Edmund Randall. He had been accepted as a member of the bar in Philadelphia. He could practice law as a combat seasoned veteran no longer eligible for the draft.

So Billy Howe decided to just go home. He was sick and couldn’t get help. There was little left of his company. He literally walked home from Virginia to Pennsylvania. It took him forty-five days.

When he returned home he did not try to hide. His wife nursed him back to health and he went back to being a farmer. Shortly after he arrived home his third child was born on February 6, 1863. Did he think that leaving was wrong? The army had not forgotten him and the many thousands like him. The government would pay anyone who apprehended a deserter $30.

The following June three men came to Howe’s home to arrest him. They waited until nightfall and knocked on Howe’s door. Instead of announcing their intentions, they pretended to be a friend of Howe’s. Howe’s wife Hannah knew this friend and knew the man at the door was not the person he said he was and refused him entry to the home. At some point shots were fired and one of the men coming to arrest Howe was shot and killed.

Billy Howe claimed that he believed them to be robbers, that they shot first and he shot back in defense of himself and his family.

The surviving two men of course had a different version and claimed Howe shot first.

Howe was then on the run. About three weeks later Howe was arrested in Allentown Pennsylvania. He did not resist and no weapons were found on his person. Not long after Howe was arrested, he was taken to Fort Mifflin. It was now being used as a prison camp mainly for deserters and political prisoners.

The only place Fort Mifflin had to house the prisoners were the bomb-proofs. These were called “casements” on the Ghost Hunters episode. They were a nasty place to be for the months Howe spent awaiting trial. As we saw on the Ghost Hunters episode they were dark, cramped and dirty. And Howe had to stay longer than ten minutes.

William H Howe had two trials. The first court-martial board was appointed in November 1863 and included 8 officers. He was charged with desertion and murder. In the first trial Howe did not have a lawyer as the one lawyer he had time to ask declined to defend him. So this German-American who didn’t know English as well as German was left to defend himself.

Howe pleaded guilty to desertion but innocent to murder. He did desert the army but always contended he shot the man in self-defense.

As one would expect he was convicted of both desertion and murder and sentenced to be “hanged from the neck until dead.” Interestingly only 2/3 of the board concurred with this verdict.

As the trial papers were forwarded through channels the verdict was overturned because of “informality”. Howe did think he could not be retried but unfortunately he could. And was as another court-martial board was appointed in December of 1863.

On the second trial he was represented by a lawyer. Remember the lieutenant who resigned his commission after the battle of Fredericksburg? Edmund Randall agreed to represent Howe. He was better represented but again his story was the opposite of the two surviving men who came to arrest him. He was convicted again on both desertion and murder. And again just 2/3 of the board concurred. Howe was to face execution.

Howe wrote a letter to President Lincoln pleading his case asking for clemency. He did not ask to be pardoned but to receive life in prison instead. Howe’s unit also drafted a letter to Lincoln asking for Howe’s sentence to be commuted to life in prison.

These requests were not heeded and President Lincoln approved Howe’s sentence.

As they told us in the Ghost Hunters episode, Howe was taken to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. On August 26th, 1864 Howe was transported from Eastern State to Fort Mifflin to be executed. Howe did read this statement:

Fellow-soldiers and officers: I am now about to go before my God, to answer for the crime of having taken the life of a fellow creature. I bow with submission to my sentence, and fully forgive those who passed it and all who were witnesses against me. They did their duty as well as they could, and I take this opportunity to thank you from my heart, the members of the court-martial who tried me, and especially Captain Clarke, the judge advocate and Mr. Edmund Randall, my lawyer, for their kindness to me. But as I have to leave my dear children but my record and good name as a soldier, I feel it a duty I owe to them to state now that I never sought the life of the man I killed, and never wanted it; and I feel God will pardon me for taking it as I did. I know my fellow soldiers and officers in the army never blamed me for leaving, as I was an invalid, and had no hospital to go to in my regiment. And now I am about to leave this life and I commend my wife and little ones to the charity of the world, and as a last request I ask pardon of those I injured, and hope they will forgive me and pray for my soul.

So did William H Howe match the description that Grant described about the apparition? Unfortunately a poor man 150 years ago usually did not have his portrait painted nor was photographed. Surely if Dr. Alotta had found a description of Howe he would have included it in Stop the Evil. A physical description is not in the book.

We were able to find Dr. Alotta via email just to see if he did ever find a description of Howe and he told us that he didn’t. Clearly no one knows the story of William H Howe better than Dr. Alotta so we would think this information is lost to history.

If Grant had seen some clothing worn by the apparition we might have been able to verify the clothing. Dr. Alotta did find documentation of the clothes that William Howe wore to his execution. Grant was quite clear in the Ghost Hunters episode on what he saw and it did not include any clothing.

If you want to get the full story of William H Howe we suggest you get a copy of Stop the Evil. The book includes some terrific documentation including Howe’s letter to Lincoln in his own hand.