The votes are in. According to a vote from our Foolish community, The World's Scariest Stock is Crocs (NASDAQ:CROX).

There were many formidable contenders for this dubious honor, but Crocs ultimately took a bite out of its closest respective rivals, Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS).

One of the scariest elements of our Halloween-inspired exercise might have been the vocal outrage expressed by Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) fans that their stock was even nominated at all; a few migrated over to the Crocs article comments when they were done scorching their own turf.

Still, your collective opinion seems spot-on; on Friday, Crocs lived up to its scary rep. The stock plunged after releasing its quarterly results, closing down 16%. Crocs may have been able to report a quarterly profit of $22.1 million, but that number was helped by a major tax gain of $14.4 million and other one-time advantages.

And while Crocs was able to generate a 1.7% increase in revenue (a tricky feat for many companies these days), it also disclosed that revenue included $11.5 million in "planned sales of previously impaired footwear." Selling merchandise that had already been impaired helped improve Crocs' gross profit by $9.6 million, recouping some of the loss that it had already written off.

Before you get all excited, note that Crocs said it would return to a quarterly loss in the current quarter. Ouch.

With low-quality earnings, a swampy outlook, and its founding fad gone chillingly cold, Crocs certainly deserves its spot as the world's scariest stock. Friday's plunge is just one more reminder why Fools are better off investing in high-quality companies.