Who Keeps Winning Forest Park's Casket Races?

On a Saturday in October, which Forest Park team can push a casket with a person inside it down Beloit Avenue the fastest? Over the last few years the answer has usually been a unit of local government. The Park District of Forest Park took first place in 2021, came back to win in 2024 with a time of 17.00 seconds, and won its opening heat again in 2025. The 14th annual race is Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, and every lane holds a familiar village name.

Here is the 2024 podium as the Forest Park Review reported it:

Riveredge Hospital made the final four that year too. First and second were separated by 1.37 seconds, and second and third by less than half a second. Those are real margins on a course that a top team covers in well under 20 seconds.

A Chamber birthday, an idea from Colorado, and the five cemeteries

The race began in 2012, and Laurie Kokenes, executive director of the Forest Park Chamber of Commerce & Development, is the one who brought it to town. She got the idea from the Emma Crawford coffin race she had seen in Colorado years before, and the first Forest Park race was part of the Chamber's 100th anniversary year. "When I saw it in Colorado, I thought: 'this is so Forest Park,'" Kokenes told the Forest Park Review in 2013, pointing to the village's sense of humor and its "history of having more dead people than alive."

The joke works because the village really does have that many graves. The Chamber's own history explains why. After a Chicago lawsuit in 1868 and the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, the city stopped allowing new cemeteries inside its limits. Burials moved to the suburbs, and Forest Park ended up with five cemeteries holding more than 800,000 people: Jewish Waldheim, Concordia, Forest Home, Woodlawn and Altenheim. The ratio of buried to living keeps changing depending on who tells it. The Chamber used 56 to 1 in 2024, Kokenes gave 50 to 1 in 2022, and a 2019 Review story said some estimates go "as high as 56-1." The exact figure matters less than the fact that the village claims it with pride.

The Park District has said the same thing about why the race fits. "There's more dead people than alive in Forest Park," Park District director Jackie Iovinelli told the Review in 2022, explaining how the race ties the fall season to "the little unique information about Forest Park." That year her team raced as the "Golden Ghouls," a nod to the district's purchase of the old Pines restaurant property on Harrison Street.

Why speed decides it

From the curb, the race looks like a costume contest. The rules read more like a sport. The 2026 form, officially titled the Forest Park Flapper Ghost Casket Race Rules, says:

1. Each team has four runners and one "Ghost" riding in the casket, and all of them must be 18 or older.
2. The Ghost wears a helmet.
3. At least three of the four runners must stay in contact with the casket until it fully stops. Otherwise the casket counts as "out of control" and the team is disqualified.
4. A casket that crosses the yellow lane line is disqualified.
5. Heats run two caskets at a time. The four fastest qualifiers run two finals for first, second and third.
6. The course is about 585 feet.

There are construction limits too. A casket can be no smaller than 2 by 5 feet and no larger than 3 feet 10 inches by 8 feet. It needs a bottom and four attached wheels no bigger than 8 inches. Wheels or casters may swivel, but ropes, working engines and functional steering mechanisms are banned. With no steering wheel or tiller, the runners guide the casket and keep it in its lane. That is how the course rewards a team that trains together, and Kokenes has said that "light caskets and fast runners" make for better times.

The Review described the 2022 route as starting on Adams Street and ending at the alley south of Madison. The Chamber lists this year's location as Beloit Avenue between Madison and Adams.

Who lines up against the Park District

The field explains why the Park District's record stands out. The Review's 2025 photo gallery showed teams from the Madison Street Theater, the Forest Park Public Library, Grand Appliance, Pet Emporium and the Oak Park and River Forest Wood Shop, along with costume teams like Avengers, Toy Story and Alice in Wonderland. In 2024 the police department finished third, and Bulldog Bootcamp, a fitness business, finished second. A library, a theater, a pet store and the police all compete in the same heats on the same street.

The slow teams get their own prizes. Trophies go to the funniest and creepiest caskets, and one goes to the team that finishes "dead last." Kokenes told the Review in 2022 that some teams go after that trophy on purpose "because they really don't want to run or perhaps can't run." The tradition goes back to the first year, when a team called Teachers of the Titanic went as slowly as it could to win a trophy. The 2024 awards added a twist. A team named Dead Last, entered by Ian Pfaff, won creepiest, while the Dead Last trophy went to The British are Coming. Cicada Speedsters won funniest.

The Oct. 24 schedule

Watching is free. Team entry is $40, and the posted form lists Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, as the entry deadline. The Chamber's schedule for the day:

• 9 to 9:30 a.m. Team check-in
• 9:30 a.m. Vendor food and activities begin
• 9:30 to 10 a.m. Rules and format review for teams
• 10:30 a.m. Parade of Caskets
• 11 a.m. Races begin, with trophies after the final heat
• Before the final four heats Kids and pets costume parade
• 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Trick or Treat on Madison Street

One of the rules on the PDF form says the first race starts at 10 a.m., which doesn't match the 11 a.m. start on the same form's schedule or on the Chamber's event page. If you want a curb spot for the finals, plan around the 10:30 a.m. Parade of Caskets.

The street itself has always been part of the event. In 2013 the Review described Beloit residents decorating their houses. In 2022 Kokenes said many people along the course host outdoor viewing parties, and the Chamber added an award for the best "house party" that year. Trick or Treat on Madison starts an hour and a half after the first heat, which keeps the crowd on the same blocks as the shops. If you're planning lunch around it, our guide to dining and nightlife in Forest Park covers the street.

The Sunday before, at Forest Home

The race borrows its premise from the cemeteries. Six days earlier, the cemeteries tell their own stories. The Oak Park River Forest Museum holds its 35th annual "Tale of the Tombstones" walk at Forest Home Cemetery, 863 Des Plaines, on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026, from noon to 4 p.m. For the nation's 250th anniversary, this year's theme is "American Movements." Actors play people who moved to the area from far away or who led civic movements, and guides point out monuments, symbols and burial traditions covering 150 years.

Tours leave the main gate every 10 minutes from noon to 1:30 p.m. and last about an hour and a half. The museum says to buy tickets ahead, since people who haven't registered may be turned away. Forest Home is also where the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument stands. It went up in 1893 and is a national landmark.

After the race, Madison Street's calendar keeps going. The Chamber's Fall Wine Walk is Saturday, Nov. 7, from 1 to 5 p.m. Tickets are $55 and include tastings and a bottle of wine, with check-in at Forest Park Bank, 7348 Madison. The Holiday Walk follows on Dec. 4, with a 6 p.m. tree lighting at Madison and Thomas.

At Gagliardo Group, we've watched Forest Park's traditions grow one October at a time, and we're glad to cheer from the Beloit curb with our neighbors. If you'd like to talk about the village, its blocks, or what your own home on them might be worth, our Forest Park page is a good place to start, and so is a quick conversation with our team.