Roger Ahlgrim has nothing but respect for his profession. In the early 1900s his grandfather ran a storefront funeral parlor on the south side of Chicago, and in 1956 his father moved the business to Elmhurst. Ahlgrim and his two brothers followed in their father’s footsteps, and Ahlgrim & Sons opened four more branches–in Schaumburg, Streamwood, Lake Zurich, and Palatine. Ahlgrim is chief funeral director at the Palatine branch, a job that requires a certain amount of sobriety and decorum. But all that dissolves when he heads down to the basement of the building to play miniature golf.
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The third hole forces players to putt through a castle equipped with a guillotine. The seventh hole, by far the most difficult in the course, is decorated with a mausoleum and tiny tombstones built by Ahlgrim’s daughter-in-law, each bearing the name of someone who worked for the firm in the past century. There’s a stroke penalty for entering the cemetery or disturbing a grave. Among the other hazards are haunted houses, cryptoriums, and water traps inhabited by plastic snakes and alligators. The entire basement is decorated with bats, spiderwebs, and nooses, and speakers pipe in howling cats and distant thunder.
His two sons invited their friends over to play golf for birthday parties and Cub Scout events, and word began to spread. By summer 1966 the course had become one of the most popular teen hangouts in town. Ahlgrim was concerned at first. “We never knew how people would react,” he says. “When parents started to hear about what was happening over here, I was worried that some of them might not think it was appropriate.”
Ahlgrim comes down to the basement to play as often as possible, and he takes a giddy pleasure in pointing out the finer points of the course. “Listen to the voice,” he says, leaning toward the haunted house on the sixth hole. From somewhere inside the small building a woman’s voice cries, Run while you can! “That’s my wife,” says Ahlgrim, grinning mischievously. “Most people don’t even hear it, but I get a real kick out of it.”
