In 1966, Howe was awarded the Stanley Baubaire Scholarship for her master's degree work at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

Much of Howe's work includes speculations about what she terms "unexplained" phenomena, such as cattle mutilations, crop circles, UFO sightings, and alien abductions.

[12] Howe has produced numerous UFO related programming, including a two-hour special Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms in association with WATL-Fox, Atlanta, was Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator for UFO Report: Sightings financed by Paramount Studios and the Fox network in Los Angeles that was first broadcast in October 1991 and became the Sightings series on Fox.

[13] Howe has proposed that some photographs of crop circles show evidence of mysterious energy she terms "visible light phenomena".

Joe Nickell described Howe as a "credulous journalist" in a 2002 article in Skeptical Inquirer magazine, saying that photos Howe published purporting to show mysterious energy are simply misinterpretations of photographic accidents, such as a camera's wrist strap reflecting the flash, or circular artifacts caused by floating dust, errors that Nickell calls "the stock-in-trade of ghost hunters".