Holborn London Underground escalators
The escalator down from Holborn's ticket hall down to the Central Line. (Representational image) Ged Carroll via Flickr

A British mum has warned parents to be cautious while on an escalator after her son suffered a scary injury due to a freak accident. In a lengthy anonymous post, the mother narrated the nightmare she and her husband endured as the London tube escalator "swallowed" her son's foot.

In a post on the parenting forum Mumsnet, the unidentified mother claimed that the incident happened during the festive period when their family took a trip to the Winter Wonderland lights at Hyde Park. The family decided to take the underground tube to reach their desired destination but soon their trip came to a halt.

The mum-of-two said that her "biggest nightmare came true," while descending down to the tube station via an escalator.

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"We started to go down the long escalator and just a few moments later I heard a really loud distressed high pitched scream," she wrote and added that when she ran down the escalator, she was horrified to see her 8-year-old son screaming in pain.

"My biggest nightmare came true when I realised it was my own son lying on the step with DH sitting next to him hugging him as he continued to cry non-stop. I looked everywhere to see why he was crying and it was then I noticed the escalator had swallowed his whole foot and was dragging DS along as he screamed. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen," she wrote.

Soon the security staff stopped the escalator and called guards to rescue the little boy. The emergency staff immediately sprung in to action to remove the boy's foot from the trap while his mother and other family members prayed.

"I was fearing the worst to praying for a miracle where things could be like it had never happened. The people from TFL and emergency services were amazing," the British mother wrote on the forum and said that her son was lucky to get out of the dangerous accident with just a few bruises and cuts, and there was no internal damage to his leg.

The mother has speculated on what might have gone wrong. She said that while giving way to one commuter, her son might have "crossed his left foot in front of the right one to stand like that and the tip of the left boot must have touched the edge of the skirt panel. It seems that the friction created by this contact drew his foot in the gap by the skirt panel and entrapped it inside," she wrote.

"My son said he didn't put his foot in the gap, but that he just felt as if something suddenly pulled it inside," she added. Each year, several children suffer injuries in escalator-related accidents. While some are lucky to escape any major injury, others suffer substantial damage.