When George Harrison played a ghostly prank on Paul McCartney

Sir Paul McCartney was once made to think by Beatles bandmate George Harrison, who was playing a prank, that his dead mother was trying to contact him.

The Beatles stars and their bandmate John Lennon were once trying to contact the dead through an Ouija board when they thought they had made contact with the singer's mother, who had died a few years earlier.

"We once did an Ouija board thing when we were kids. We weren't really into all that, but somebody said, 'let's do it', so we were touching the glass saying, 'OK, nobody push it, OK?' so then, suddenly, it's moving," Contactmusic quoted Sir Paul as saying.

"And it spells, 'congratulations... son' and we're going 'no!' and it spells 'congratulations... son...number...one...In NME."

Realising that his mother wouldn't have known what NME — a British music magazine — was, Paul said he knew someone was cheating.

He said: "We were all, 'Oh, f--- off' and then there's George, you know, laughing — he's been pushing it all the time. Bad boy."

Ouija board is a flat tablet featuring letters, numbers and other symbols, which ghostly spirits can supposedly control by directing a pointer to spell out words.