We’re all familiar with the infamous ‘Escalator Safety’ Public Information Film from 1970, from which the image of the child’s welly boot being crushed down the sides of the escalator haunted the minds of just about every child subjected to it.

Here it is, to relive the trauma…

But there was another.

While the above PIF has been showcased many times online and led to much discussion and nostalgia among kids of the 70s and 80s, many times I have seen members of the Haunted Generation recall another Escalator PIF that they say scared them much more than the above infamous one.

And this one featured a doll.

It’s a well-known fact that the guaranteed way to make a PIF terrifying is to feature a doll in it. (Click for a case in point) But this particular Escalator PIF, in which a doll rather than a wellington boot is crushed by an escalator, has somehow remained elusive, even though many seem to recall it.

From the recollections of members of the Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s) Facebook group:

The PIF featured a little girl on an escalator, holding a rag doll. She dropped the doll and tried to pick it up, but the doll was hideously mangled and scalped underneath the bottom step, and the PIF ended with a shot of a man standing holding the doll’s hair.

It doesn’t seem to have run for as long as the ‘welly-boot’ PIF did, and the escalator might have been one of the old wooden escalators that were banned after the Kings’ Cross fire.

I’ve seen many people talk about their recollections of this PIF across various nostalgia sites and YouTube. But somehow, despite having scarred the minds of many, it remains elusive and has yet to show up online.

Either way, it seems to have inspired a more contemporary Canadian PSA…

The Canadian one above definitely seems to follow the same formula. But the original British PIF with the doll on the escalator seems to allude us.

Can you find this PIF for us?

If you have any more detailed recollections of this PIF, or better still, have a copy of it – comment here or drop us an email to let us know!