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Blue Pete's

ByKathleen Walls

Interior of Blue Pete's

Recently, I visited Blue Pete's, located in Pungo, about 20 minutes from the resort area of Virginia Beach. I was not disappointed, either, in the food or in its ghost stories. Blue Pete's is named for the little duck-like bird, the American coot, locally known as the "blue pete." The owner, K. C. Knauer, told me that the place is very haunted. She and many of her staff have had some strange experiences over the years. While I dug into my Seafood Sampler filled with crab cakes, shrimp, scallops and flounder and a side of sweet potato bread smeared generously with orange marmalade, I could look out over the water and watch all kinds of birds searching for their dinner as well.

Outside boardwark at Blue Pete's

Blue Pete's began life as a rough bar located on a rustic wooden building built on stilts over the water. K.C. came over and told me about the history. "The original place was a rough-and-tumble bar back in the 1970s. It was just a shack with four tables and a bar. Boaters and fishermen would pull in by boar and come in for a drink and then clean their fish on the back dock. They were a really wild bunch. All of them had guns and would sit on the back dock and shoot at things."

I noted that the brick looked really old, and she told me that earlier there had been a tiny post office here. She said she felt the ghosts were patrons who had hung out here in the early bar years and had such a good time they didn't want to leave.

When she first got the restaurant, neither she nor any of her employers knew anything about it being haunted but started hearing things. Around 11:30 they would start hearing voices when no one was there. One of the strangest phenomena happened shortly after K.C. bought the restaurant. She said, "There were two separate tables. There was a woman in one group who had a baby sitting in a booster seat. She got up and went to the restroom. When the mother was returning, the chair she had been sitting in right next to her baby just spun out into the middle of the floor. It moved about three feet. It was like someone had been sitting there admiring the baby and saw the mother returning so they jumped up. Everybody in the place turned to look. Funny thing, the two groups became friends and came back together about a year later."

She also said she had actually once seen the figure of a woman run across the room. "I thought it was strange. She never set off the motion detector. She was dressed in a ‘70s kind of outfit, a lime green jumpsuit, and she had short blond hair."

Tiffany, a waitress at Blue Pete's, told me about what happened to her one night. "It was just me and the kitchen manager, Rocco. We were getting ready to set the alarm and leave. Then we heard a loud thump thump in the back dining room. He about jumped out of his skin. He's about 6-foot-2, but he jumped. I'm trying to find the light. I'm not going to walk into the room with no light on. He stayed in the front and wouldn't even help me look. When I looked in the room, no one was there. We went outside and looked, but no one was anywhere around. It was spooky."

Rocco had just been there early one morning by himself with his little boy, Anthony. Anthony was about 2 and had just learned to say "carry you," which of course meant "pick me up." Rocco left the room for a minute, and when he came back in, Anthony was in the middle of the floor with his hands out to an unseen entity saying, "Carry you." Rocco grabbed his son and took him back home.

On another occasion, Jessie, who also worked there, and Rocco heard somebody in front room. Two tray holders went down behind them, bam bam! "They screamed like girls and ran out of the room," KC said. Brittany, KC's daughter, was working one day and heard a sneeze from the restroom. When she went in to check, no one was in there.

This is an excerpt from Hosts With Ghosts: Haunted Historic Hotels in the Southeast.
If you enjoyed it you can order an autographed copy of the book here.