What do you think?
Rate this book
Bone Chillers #11
Toilet Terror
Flushing her chemistry experiment down the toilet just before her brother flushes his dead goldfish, Ellie is horrified when a sinister creature emerges from the plumbing and seeks to take over the bathroom. Original.
- GenresHorror
128 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published July 9, 1996
1 person is currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
Betsy Haynes
123 books111 followersABOUT ME
Maybe it's because my feisty grandma chased tarantulas around with a broom when we lived on an oil lease property when I was a baby that made me love danger and adventure. And maybe it was my father's spending nights as a trombonist with the bands of his day and his days spent drawing sketches that sparked my artistic side. Do you suppose that because my mother stood only four feet ten inches tall that I feel like a giant at five feet? And I'm sure my FBI (Full Blooded Italian) step-father, his seven brothers and sisters and their families are responsible for my LOVE of Italian food. That's who I am. Who are you?
My First Book, Peppy The Frog That I Wrote In The 2nd Grade
I'll always be a child at heart. Whenever I close my eyes, wonderful, funny, awful, embarrassing memories of middle school/junior high come flooding back to fill the pages of my contemporary novels. My childhood friendships and rivalries with old enemies all find their way into my books. I've even spied on my own kids for story ideas.
Unlike most kids who can't wait to grow up, I've gotten younger--at least my stories have. I've stepped into the world of 7 to 10 year olds.
I and my husband, Jim, live in Texas on Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. We are owned by our greyhound, Miller. Our favorite things to do are traveling the world and boating.
Maybe it's because my feisty grandma chased tarantulas around with a broom when we lived on an oil lease property when I was a baby that made me love danger and adventure. And maybe it was my father's spending nights as a trombonist with the bands of his day and his days spent drawing sketches that sparked my artistic side. Do you suppose that because my mother stood only four feet ten inches tall that I feel like a giant at five feet? And I'm sure my FBI (Full Blooded Italian) step-father, his seven brothers and sisters and their families are responsible for my LOVE of Italian food. That's who I am. Who are you?
My First Book, Peppy The Frog That I Wrote In The 2nd Grade
I'll always be a child at heart. Whenever I close my eyes, wonderful, funny, awful, embarrassing memories of middle school/junior high come flooding back to fill the pages of my contemporary novels. My childhood friendships and rivalries with old enemies all find their way into my books. I've even spied on my own kids for story ideas.
Unlike most kids who can't wait to grow up, I've gotten younger--at least my stories have. I've stepped into the world of 7 to 10 year olds.
I and my husband, Jim, live in Texas on Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. We are owned by our greyhound, Miller. Our favorite things to do are traveling the world and boating.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 19, 2023
Time for another Bonechillers book ! Toilet Terror always intrigued me a little bit, but I've never gotten around to reading it. The story starts off with Ellie babysitting her little brother Hans (Hans moleman?) Hans is crying, because his goldfish just died. Lucky for him though, his sister is working to become a scientist and wants to work on a way to make things come back to life. She hasn't perfected anything yet though and sadly spike, hans' goldfish has died and hans wants a proper funeral.But Ellie doesn't give her that in fear other animals would dig it up. So she flushes him down the toilet. A day or so later Ellie and her friend Andy are working on a science project that Ellie's parents bought her they end up messing up and flushing the chemicals down the toilet. The toilet water turns purple and fizzy and we got our origin for monster Spike. Ellie starts hearing noises coming from behind the wall but doesn't think much about it, until one day water starts shooting up from the toilet and faucet and then just stops by itself.Then they come home from school one day and see alot of their furniture is torn and turned over and looks like somebody robbed them.Instead of being smart they investigate and actually run into monster Spike, a creature mixed with hans goldfish and chemicals who I just pictured as Gillman.Spike attacks but eventually runs away back down the drains. He kinda has this ability to stretch his body to squeeze into pipes kinda like that monster from the X files. I think his name's the squeezer ? Anyway they begin looking for plumbers in the phone book and run across this plumber that specializes in supernatural plumbing ,like monsters ghosts and things in your pipes, which was actually pretty funny. But that's about as far as the humor goes in this book,because when they run into this thing again it's violent.It's pretty surprising. This thing tries to drown hans in a shower, tries to drown Ellie in a pool,anything to do with water, he tries to drown you .When the plumber gets to Ellie and hans house he explains they have to go into the sewer system to see this creatures lair. I was hoping for a little more here.Maybe learn more about other monsters in the Bone Chillers universe.But no they see the lair and leave, because Spike isn't there and they left hans at home. Toilet Terror is probably my least favorite of the Bone Chillers so far. But it's still entertaining enough. I would probably give this one a four out of five stars as well. But mostly because of the violence in this book. the threat level is high when the creature pops up .I did enjoy the uniqueness of how this thing operates and the ending is pretty satisfying.
July 28, 2022
The Bonechillers series has another winner. A child scientist and her little brother accidentally create a monster out of a dead fish. It's full of great moments, the creature isn't hidden for too long, and there's a wacky monster-exterminating side character that adds a lot. (I pictured Norm from Cheers, in a role similar to the 80s movie House). That said, this isn't quite five stars. The protagonist uses her smarts to solve the monster problem, but she acts like an idiot during the middle of the book. (If there's a fish monster after you, don't go for a swim in the pool.) Even worse, the best friend character is a personality-free dud. The story would've been more effective if it followed the sister-and-brother-teaming-up template of Night of the Living Clay.
February 14, 2026
6/10
Interesting concept and cool villain, just kind of repetitive and predictable. Not bad, not amazing.
Interesting concept and cool villain, just kind of repetitive and predictable. Not bad, not amazing.
October 29, 2020
Bone Chillers round 3 and this is actually a special one. I mentioned that after book 10, every book in the series minus one was actually ghostwritten, with the actual writer being credited on the same page that would usually just show Betsy's name. Yeah, no being pushed to the copyright page like in Ghosts of Fear Street. Actually, this writer, Elizabeth Winfrey, did write one Ghosts book, Tale of the Blue Monkey, which I have actually read and did a quip review for here. She also did one Goosebumps Presents book, so now these series share blood, nice.
This was the very first book in the series to be ghostwritten. I find it interesting this happened because as far as we know, most of the ripoff series were not ghost-written despite also being monthly series. (Well, there is some evidence for Shivers but that's another story). Anyway, you can tell at least a bit. Maybe the others have this but there's a few quirky bits that were not in the others as much, like when they look for plumbers and happen to find one who specializes in supernatural stuff. Yes, really. I loved that.
Less great is one writing quirk that annoyed me. I swear most of the chapters end on some variation of "Something is wrong, but what?" or "Something scary might be happening soon". Very few end on an actual action, even though there's a fair amount of it. It gets annoying after a while. There's a part where they seemingly kill the monster but fear it may come back and they really hammer in this obvious that we already know is going to happen.
Little things like that made this lesser than the other two I've read but otherwise it was fun. It centers around Ellie who is an inspiring scientist, which was a cute trait to give her. After a failed experiment, she flushes it down the toilet...along with a recently dead fish belonging to her brother Hans. Soon odd things start happening and spoilers, the dead fish was brought back to life as a mutant monster that can go through anypipes.
A silly idea but it does have fun with it. It does start too quickly though, as it goes from trying some build up to just jumping to it. There is some filler a bit later on as a result. Plus, it feels like for a period it spends more time building up to when the monster appears than it does on when it does appear. There is more action with it later on though.
I really like how proactive the characters are, always trying to find ways to stop this. Even Hans gets in good moments instead of always being a brat. I liked the thing with the siblings too, Ellie does give him shit and he can annoying to her but they end up getting along well usually and care about each other when they were in danger. That was nice to see.
Despite not being written by Betsy, this does have her strength of being able to do character stuff well when there is focus on it. After a break from then in Teacher Creature, this did have a twist, a basic but good one. While it's more fun than scary, there are some somewhat intense moments like a scene involving a shower.
Overall, it is a bit clunky in [places like the others can be but also like them it has some fun high points. I wish these were a bit consistent but they are at least usually creative and fun with some nice moments. Even with the silly idea, there is fun to be had here, so I enjoyed it overall.
I don't have as many of these as the other series, so don't expect as many reviews as with them. I would say that it will be a while before I read another 0one...if a certain November holiday were not coming up. Oh yeah, we're finally going there.
STRAY NOTES:
There's a scene that uses pool for horror better in that scene did Pool Ghoul did in a whole book.
They get new wish from a pet store, hope it wasn't Custom Pets.
Ellie says they really should have stayed out of the bathroom. Guess you can say they should Eat Cheese and barf. ...Wait...
This was the very first book in the series to be ghostwritten. I find it interesting this happened because as far as we know, most of the ripoff series were not ghost-written despite also being monthly series. (Well, there is some evidence for Shivers but that's another story). Anyway, you can tell at least a bit. Maybe the others have this but there's a few quirky bits that were not in the others as much, like when they look for plumbers and happen to find one who specializes in supernatural stuff. Yes, really. I loved that.
Less great is one writing quirk that annoyed me. I swear most of the chapters end on some variation of "Something is wrong, but what?" or "Something scary might be happening soon". Very few end on an actual action, even though there's a fair amount of it. It gets annoying after a while. There's a part where they seemingly kill the monster but fear it may come back and they really hammer in this obvious that we already know is going to happen.
Little things like that made this lesser than the other two I've read but otherwise it was fun. It centers around Ellie who is an inspiring scientist, which was a cute trait to give her. After a failed experiment, she flushes it down the toilet...along with a recently dead fish belonging to her brother Hans. Soon odd things start happening and spoilers, the dead fish was brought back to life as a mutant monster that can go through anypipes.
A silly idea but it does have fun with it. It does start too quickly though, as it goes from trying some build up to just jumping to it. There is some filler a bit later on as a result. Plus, it feels like for a period it spends more time building up to when the monster appears than it does on when it does appear. There is more action with it later on though.
I really like how proactive the characters are, always trying to find ways to stop this. Even Hans gets in good moments instead of always being a brat. I liked the thing with the siblings too, Ellie does give him shit and he can annoying to her but they end up getting along well usually and care about each other when they were in danger. That was nice to see.
Despite not being written by Betsy, this does have her strength of being able to do character stuff well when there is focus on it. After a break from then in Teacher Creature, this did have a twist, a basic but good one. While it's more fun than scary, there are some somewhat intense moments like a scene involving a shower.
Overall, it is a bit clunky in [places like the others can be but also like them it has some fun high points. I wish these were a bit consistent but they are at least usually creative and fun with some nice moments. Even with the silly idea, there is fun to be had here, so I enjoyed it overall.
I don't have as many of these as the other series, so don't expect as many reviews as with them. I would say that it will be a while before I read another 0one...if a certain November holiday were not coming up. Oh yeah, we're finally going there.
STRAY NOTES:
There's a scene that uses pool for horror better in that scene did Pool Ghoul did in a whole book.
They get new wish from a pet store, hope it wasn't Custom Pets.
Ellie says they really should have stayed out of the bathroom. Guess you can say they should Eat Cheese and barf. ...Wait...
May 13, 2023
Book quote: “Be careful where you sit!”
“Do you mix stuff in the toilet bowl after learning something about science?” ~ Chen Pink, reviewer of ‘Toilet Terror’
I was glad that I found this book on Goodreads. It was my favorite childhood book and series by the amazing, imaginative author, Betsy Haynes. I never thought that I would have the chance to leave a review since I read ‘Toilet Terror’ (1996 edition) during my kid’s period and still re-read it in my adulthood. I remembered this book title and its book cover with the monster creature in the toilet bowl until today. It touched me to see the same cover remain unchanged today. I highly recommend that you read and re-read!
“Do you mix stuff in the toilet bowl after learning something about science?” ~ Chen Pink, reviewer of ‘Toilet Terror’
I was glad that I found this book on Goodreads. It was my favorite childhood book and series by the amazing, imaginative author, Betsy Haynes. I never thought that I would have the chance to leave a review since I read ‘Toilet Terror’ (1996 edition) during my kid’s period and still re-read it in my adulthood. I remembered this book title and its book cover with the monster creature in the toilet bowl until today. It touched me to see the same cover remain unchanged today. I highly recommend that you read and re-read!
April 19, 2016
I've explained previously why I am reading children's books and will not do so again here. Ms. Haynes, while a decent author in her own right, never received nearly as much popularity or publicity as R.L. Stine, meaning she found herself stuck in his shadow throughout her career. It is sad, really, because I rather enjoyed a lot of her books. This one, while not her best, is also not her worst. It's a short, fun tale for kids of what could happen when you flush a dead fish down the toilet. Warning: he may come back for revenge!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews