Somebody sent a note to my Halloween listserv a few days ago, alerting us that Rob Johnson of DarkSyde Acres was raffling off his custom hot rod hearse, the Lost Souls.

I have yet to be able to access the raffle site, winahearse.com, but Rob has posted about the raffle several other places so I can provide a few details.

The tickets are on sale now, and the drawing will be held October 31, 2010 at midnight. Tickets are $10 each or 3 for $25, and a maximum of 3,000 will be sold. The winner is responsible for picking up the hearse, so if you’re not local to Jonesville, MI, there’s transport to consider.

Taxes may be an issue–the stated value of the hearse is over the $5,100 amount that the US government allows before it expects a cut. On this thread Rob speculated that he might drop the hearse’s stated value to be in line with the cutoff, although I suspect that might open a whole other can of undead worms.

Additionally, by law raffle proceeds are supposed to go to a non-profit organization. In the same thread Rob said that the organization was “Wicked Jester,” but aside from the clothing company the only Wicked Jester I can find is this one, which does not appear to be a non-profit. (It’s possible that this is addressed further on the winahearse.com site, but since I can’t get to it, I don’t know for sure.)

The upshot of all of this is, there’s a chance to win a custom hearse, assuming a bunch of legal stuff is worked out and you’re either in Michigan or willing to travel.

They’ve said that if this raffle goes well, they plan to raffle off a custom hearse every year. If you don’t get in on the action this time, you can try again next year.