HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
The Chesapeake Beach volunteers' 1962 fire station on Pleasure House Road, now Commonwealth Brewing, where firefighters reported a prankster ghost.
2444 Pleasure House Rd, Virginia Beach, VA 23455
Research updated September 2026
Age
Kids are welcome with adult supervision; alcohol service remains 21+.
Cost
$$
Brewery taproom with wood-fired pizza and weekend brunch; menus on Commonwealth Brewing's site.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat, urban, paved
Equipment
Photos OK
Virginia Beach Fire Service History · Volunteer Fire Department Heritage
The Chesapeake Beach Volunteer Fire Department, chartered in 1942 and incorporated in 1948, lost its first station when construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel claimed the site. In 1962 the department was granted a plot nearby on Pleasure House Road, and its members built a new station by hand in eight months with donated materials and labor. That same year the department took on emergency medical care and became the Chesapeake Beach Volunteer Fire & Rescue Department. The station later gained a kitchen, sleeping quarters and office space, and two more apparatus bays went up in 1968.
Firefighter Benjamin Bishop died in the 1970s. Colleagues who remembered him as a prankster believed he was behind the station's later disturbances.
In 2013 the squad moved into the city's new Fire & EMS Station 4 at Greenwell Road and Shore Drive, which it shares with the Virginia Beach Fire Department, and in 2023 it sold the old Pleasure House Road station. The renovated building is home to Commonwealth Brewing Company, which describes the brewery as housed in a fully renovated former fire and rescue station.
Sources
The accounts at the Chic's Beach station come from a fire-industry retrospective on haunted stations. It is believed that a firefighter named Benjamin Bishop, who died in the 1970s, haunted the place and enjoyed every second of it. He was remembered as a prankster, always pulling the fire alarm or turning on the sirens.
Sometimes the crew would witness their vehicles' doors slamming shut on their own. On a few occasions, the ghost even threw pillows.
When the fire crew later moved into a new station less than a mile away, an unexplained incident with the alarm system there led firefighters to believe Bishop had followed them.
Commonwealth Brewing Company now occupies the original building. No reports from the brewery's own staff have been published.
Notable Entities
Commonwealth Brewing Company pours its beer in the renovated former Chesapeake Beach Volunteer Fire and Rescue station on Pleasure House Road, with wood-fired pizza and weekend brunch. Firefighters who worked here in the 1970s reported a prankster ghost they tied to a late colleague, Benjamin Bishop; no reports from the brewery's own staff have been published.
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