Fort Mifflin

Fort Mifflin sits on what was once Mud Island in the Delaware River, a few minutes from the runways of Philadelphia International Airport. British engineer John Montresor began it in 1771 to guard the colonial port; six years later he returned as the enemy, directing the siege works that pounded the patriot garrison. Through October and November 1777, roughly 400 defenders held out against about 2,000 British troops and a Royal Navy squadron in what is often called the heaviest bombardment of the Revolutionary War. When the garrison slipped away on the night of November 15, about 250 of them had been killed or wounded – but the delay had helped Washington’s army reach winter quarters at Valley Forge.

The United States rebuilt the fort in the 1790s to plans begun by Pierre L’Enfant, and the stone walls, barracks, officers’ quarters and vaulted casemates that stand today date largely from that era. During the Civil War, Fort Mifflin held Confederate prisoners of war along with Union soldiers and civilians. Its most famous inmate was William Howe, a Union private convicted of desertion and the murder of an officer, who led a failed escape in February 1864, was held in a solitary cell in the casemates and was hanged at the fort on August 26, 1864 before a ticketed crowd. The Army left in the 1950s and 1960s, and volunteers restored the site from the 1980s onward.

Those prisoners and soldiers are the source of most of the fort’s ghost stories, but its signature haunting is a woman. Local lore names her Elizabeth Pratt, said to have lived in the officers’ quarters, to have disowned her daughter for loving a soldier and to have died soon after the daughter did – in some versions by suicide. Accounts conflict on almost every point, and no record has been found that confirms her or the story; some researchers think the name was attached to a different Elizabeth who fell ill at the fort. What is consistent is the claim: screams from the empty officers’ quarters, loud enough that, according to local accounts reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, people have called the police.

The fort now describes itself as one of the most haunted places in the country and funds its preservation partly through overnight paranormal investigations. In 2006 a caretaker and volunteers reopened a sealed magazine known as Casemate 11, its walls marked with 1860s graffiti, and soon afterward the Ghost Hunters team of SyFy was among the first to investigate it.

The “screaming lady” – a woman’s cries said to come from the officers’ quarters – is the best-known report. Visitors and investigators also describe a girl’s voice, shadowy figures, a cot in Casemate 5 that felt warm when it should have been cold, footsteps, and an unwelcoming presence attributed to the condemned prisoner William Howe.

The officers’ quarters for the screaming woman; Casemates 5 and 11, where Civil War prisoners were held; the blacksmith shop, the soldiers’ barracks and the area around the old guardhouse. Many reports come during the fort’s overnight ghost hunts.

The fort has appeared on SyFy’s Ghost Hunters and other paranormal programmes and is a fixture of Philadelphia ghost guides. It hosts paranormal nights alongside Revolutionary War reenactments and history tours that tell the story of the 1777 siege.