Brave children armed with clubs battled frightening features in an attempt to beat par as the miniature golf course at El Morro Park in Oak Forest became haunted on a recent weekend.

One weekend a year, the Oak Forest Park District decorates the 18-hole mini-golf course in a Halloween theme.

This year, the course featured a bumblebee, a small cemetery and an inflatable pirate Mickey Mouse. One of the more challenging holes had a dogleg to the right that curved into a haunted rotten tree trunk filled with severed limbs.

The Spook-tacular Golfing drew a light rush of families shortly after opening. It was 4-year-old MeKenzie Jacobson's first-ever mini-golf outing.

The Midlothian girl said she wasn't frightened, not even by the giant bear wearing chains.

Her favorite part was “putting the ball in the hole” for the final hole, where golfers have to hit their balls up a skeeball-like ramp into the collector.

Whether Sunday was the start of Jacobson's career in professional miniature golfing remains to be seen.

According to her family, she needs to work on her fundamentals.

“She was holding the thing like a hockey stick,” said her mother, Cheryl Remkus.

The spooky mini-golfing has become an annual tradition for Cathy and Bill Petraitis, their two children and several members of their extended family. They gather their families together for a round of golf before hosting a big Halloween party at their Oak Forest home, even though the holiday is still weeks away.

“It's hard to get everyone together on Halloween, so we started doing this,” Cathy Petraitis said while holding her 1-year-old son, Tommy.

Halloween always has been her favorite holiday, even since she was a child and would fill up pillowcases with candy while trick-or-treating, Cathy Petraitis said. She teaches in Merrionette Park and plans to dress as an emoji this year.

Bill Petraitis gets into the spirit in his own way by being a “maniac” when it comes to handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, his wife said.

He spent part of the time Sunday showing his 3-year-old son, Billy, the technique for putting a golf ball.

“They're a little young, but whatever,” Bill Petraitis said, adding that it's great fun for his whole family.

Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.