Online Dating Horror Stories

Halloween is without a doubt one of my favorite holidays. I look forward to October every year - the costumes, the decorations, the haunted houses, the pumpkin patches, the apple cider - everything about the season gets me excited, but there's nothing I look forward to more than the horror movies. Some are so terrifying that I can't bring myself to walk down a dark hallway to go to the bathroom. Some provide short jolts of fear and embarrassed giggles afterwards. Others are so campy that they are transformed into low-budget raunchy comedy flicks. In any form, I can't shake my love for horror films.

In celebration of the Halloween season, let's take a look at another kind of scary story: online dating horror stories.

Take this one, posted by a frustrated dater on Craigslist: "Online dating can produce some of the worst dates ever. The last guy i went out with brought a sock puppet... a sock puppet... on our date and tried to talk to me with it. To be cute, I think. But it freaked me out. Seriously."

Or this one: "I like to refer to the whole encounter as "Seal Ya Later"...every time he said something he considered funny (which was a lot apparently!) he let out an ear splitting seal laugh- (yes, a seal- as in: AHRR AHRR AHRR AHRR) and it wasn't a quick affair either.. each laugh went on for about a minute!! Thankfully, by that point I was getting verrrry fast at drinking tea and managed to sneak out before any more marine mammals appeared."

A poster on Internet Dating Tales had the misfortune to run into this web-cam-loving Lothario: "One day, while we were on the cams together, I got a phone call. I was still at my desk while I took the call so I could see him while I talked. Evidently he forgot that he was on the cam because while I was slightly diverted (but not totally) he picked his nose...and ate it. I saw the whole thing."

So how you can avoid finding yourself taking on the starring role in an online dating horror story of your very own? Learn from the little mistakes as best as you can, trust your instincts if something feels of, and establish a set of personal rules, like "I will not date anyone who doesn't send a photo or have detailed information on their profile " and "I will not meet up with anyone who will not speak to me on the phone first."

Readers, do you have any hilarious online dating horror stories?