The house was empty except for Ali Nejati, a junior mechanical engineering major, who was lying in bed waiting to sleep. He started hearing whispers, but could not make out what they were saying.

Nejati said he believes in ghosts and demons.

“I was in bed and I think I heard something whispering to me and it was out of nowhere so I was kind of spooked by it,” Nejati said. “Nobody was in the house.”

What Nejati is skeptical about, however, is Ouija boards.

The Ouija board started appearing in advertisements in 1891 that touted it as a “wonderful talking board.” It has numbers 0 through 9, the alphabet, the words “yes” and “no” side-by-side and the word “good bye,” and acts as a platform for the spirit world to answer questions. The board was born in the midst of the American obsession with spiritualism in the second half of the 19th century, resting on the premise that it is possible to contact the dead who walk among the living.

Recent movies such as Paranormal Activity have reinforced the Ouija board’s presence in popular culture. Several students, such as Nejati, believe in the supernatural, but are skeptical about whether Ouija boards are a plausible way to contact the other side. Others negate the possibility altogether.

Ben Pereboom, a freshman journalism major, said he doesn’t believe the Ouija board is anything more than people’s subconsciouses.

“It’s supposed to move,” he said, “so you’ll do something to make it move.”

However, Pereboom entertains the idea of talking with spirits.

“If we could talk to dead people there’s a lot we could ask them but that would be the main thing — ‘Where are you right now?'” Pereboom said. “‘By what means are you existing?'”

Other students would want to know what the spirits think about their own lives.

Nejati said his dream is to own a company and be a rocket scientist. If he had the chance to converse with someone — or something — from the other side, he said he would ask one thing.

“Will I be as successful, if not more successful, than what I perceive myself being in the future?”

Mark Wymer, a second-year doctoral student studying applied statistics, thinks it is “shortsighted” to negate the existence of spirits entirely. He believes in science, but said his sisters are spiritual and have had experience with psychics.

If the Ouija board works, he said he would try to make contact with passed loved ones, and would ask: “Could you show me that you’re still out there, Mom?”

The possibility of any supernatural experience makes many students skeptical. But if Ouija boards work, students would ask the same question: “Where are you?”