I've heard of the question as a lateral thinking puzzle. If you look up albatross soup puzzle you can find many variations. Typically, this is meant to be a game where you can ask someone who knows the "correct" answer yes/no questions until you arrive at that "correct" answer.
Having it on a test makes no sense because there are infinitely many valid answers that would make way more sense and without a feedback loop to guide someone to the intended answer you likely won't get the intended answer (and the intended answer is full of holes, so it's up to the person answering yes/no to make the answer make sense). So it would make sense if this question is actually the result of a supernatural ghost story inserting itself in to where it doesn't belong.