HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Nebraska's oldest standing high school building, now a museum with a clarinetist legend
Hall and Macomb Streets, Valentine, NE 69201
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Operated by the Cherry County Historical Society; donation-based or low admission. Check local listings for seasonal hours.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-story 1890s brick school building with stairs.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1897 · Reputed Oldest Standing High School in Nebraska · 1890s School Architecture · Cherry County Historical Museum
Centennial Hall was constructed in 1897 in Valentine, the seat of Cherry County in north-central Nebraska's Sandhills. The two-story brick building served as the town's high school and is reputed to be the oldest standing high-school building in the state.
After its use as a school ended, the building was preserved and converted into a museum operated by the Cherry County Historical Society. Its exhibits cover the history of Valentine and the surrounding ranch country, and the building itself, with its period classrooms, is part of the draw.
The museum is promoted through the Valentine tourism board as one of the community's anchor heritage sites. Like many surviving nineteenth-century schools, it has accumulated local stories over its long life, the most repeated of which concerns the music room. Local interest in that legend has been documented by visitors and writers, while newspaper research into the underlying claim has not turned up a supporting record — a detail the building's caretakers acknowledge.
Sources
The building's best-known story concerns a student musician said to have died in 1944 after using a poisoned clarinet reed. From this premise grew the reports that give the legend its life: faint clarinet or piano music heard in the music room when it is empty, and a chair that visitors say rocks on its own.
The death itself does not hold up to checking. Research into local newspaper records turned up no death matching the story, which means the poisoned-reed account should be read as folklore rather than history. That kind of debunking is unusual for a small-town ghost story and is part of what makes Centennial Hall's legend notable — the tale persists even though its central claim has no documentary support.
What remains are the experiential reports tied to the music room, repeated by visitors over the years. The museum does not present itself as a haunted attraction, and the legend circulates mainly through local retelling and regional writing about the building.
Tour the 1897 school building, now a Cherry County historical museum, with exhibits on Valentine and the Sandhills region. The music room is the focus of the building's ghost story. Hours are seasonal and sometimes by appointment through the historical society.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Tuscaloosa, AL
Gorgas House was built in 1829 as a dining hall for the newly founded University of Alabama. It is the oldest surviving building on the campus. Confederate Brigadier General Josiah Gorgas, who served as the Confederate Army's chief of ordnance during the Civil War, became president of the University of Alabama and lived in the house from 1878 until his death there in 1883.
Creede, CO
Silver was discovered in Creede, Colorado in 1889, and within a year the town had grown from nothing to 10,000 people. It drew some of the frontier era's most notorious figures: Bob Ford (who killed Jesse James in Missouri in 1882) and con man Soapy Smith both operated there. The mines closed in 1985. Local miners subsequently blasted 600 feet of tunnels into the cliff above town to create the Underground Mining Museum, which opened to preserve Creede's silver era history.
Brunswick, GA
The Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation was established in the early 1800s by William Brailsford along the Altamaha River, producing rice through the labor of enslaved people on a flood-controlled tidal system. The property passed through several generations of the Troup and Dent families. Ophelia Troup Dent, the last heir, donated it to the state of Georgia in 1973. It is now a Georgia State Parks Historic Site and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (reference #76000635).