Waterville Care Facility on Former Children's Hospital Grounds
7 Highwood Street, Waterville, ME 04901
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Active skilled nursing facility. Not a public attraction. Residents and authorized visitors only inside.
Access
Limited Access
Paved driveway, residential street
Equipment
No Photos
Maine Healthcare History · Waterville Institutional History
Mount Saint Joseph operates as a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility at 7 Highwood Street in Waterville, Maine — Kennedy County's largest city. The facility currently holds 111 rooms and is listed with elder care services agencies under the name Mount Joseph at Waterville.
The building's history includes a prior use as a children's hospital on its second floor. The specific dates of the pediatric unit's operation and its transition to adult care have not been identified in publicly available sources. The physical transformation — from pediatric ward to nursing home floor — left the space in its current configuration, with the second floor now occupied by nursing home residents rather than child patients.
No deaths or incidents during the children's hospital's operation have been documented in available public records that would explain the tradition that developed after the transition.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at Mount Saint Joseph is unusual in its structure. It is not an investigation report or a witness account from a visitor — it is a pattern observed among the facility's residents over time.
One resident occupied a particular room on the second floor and spoke frequently about a little girl in a purple dress. The girl, in the resident's account, appeared in the room and kept her awake. The resident died.
A subsequent resident moved into the same room. She began speaking about a little girl in a purple dress who kept her awake at night.
The two women never met. Neither knew the other's account. The description — the specific purple dress, the keeping awake, the presence in the room — matched.
Other residents, in separate rooms, have reported children in the hallways. These accounts describe plural children, not a single figure, and are less specific than the purple-dress account.
The second floor was the former children's hospital. Whether any specific death on that floor connects to the purple-dress apparition is unknown from available records. The building's transition from pediatric care to nursing home is the structural fact underlying the tradition — what happened in the pediatric ward during its operation has not been documented in sources accessible to this research.
Notable Entities
Mount Saint Joseph is an active 111-room skilled nursing facility on Highwood Street in Waterville. It is a private care institution; do not enter without authorization. The building's second floor, where the children's hospital once operated and where the most consistent apparition accounts originate, is not accessible to the public.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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