I was drawn to a old thread at this site “Hearing radio/voices through box fan…is this possible???” It is dated 2006, so I thought I should start my own question. We are just finishing building a small 2 story house. We have been staying in it since the plumbing was finished a year ago. We had AT&T come out and put in the phone line and DSL. In my upstairs room when the Box fan is going, I kept hearing Tv? or Radio?. My daughter had her tonsils out and slept in my room for about a week. Several weeks after this I broke my silence about hearing this noise. She told me she heard it every day she slept in my room. I was relieved I was not crazy. It has only got worse and louder as time go’s by. Today She was in her room next to mine and I loudly heard classical music, and thought she had changed her ringer on her cell phone. I kept hearing the music. I got up and asked her if she could here the music? As I was standing there it started again. She used her right hand to motion me as the music started. I have unplugged the phone as it seems to be on a speaker phone when people call. Bought a new corded phone and it still sounds weird. Att came out and found a wire cross, and a bridge and repaired it. Came back out and put a filter on the outside. Nothing helped. My bank account was hacked, and the ONLY way they could have got my number is me paying the hospital over the phone. I have had success unplugging the router at night. If the fan or portable AC is running the music will come on sometimes. Turn it off and it is pure silence. I live less than 5 miles to a radio tower? Could that be it. Something is so strange…
Cut all power to the house, if you can, and see if the sound persists.
sounds like you should have hired a better electrician
I second shutting off all the breakers and seeing whether the sound goes away.
I’m certain this is unrelated. There are MANY ways your account (credit card?) can be accessed but a crossed wire isn’t one of them.
It’s from the radio tower feeding through your phone. We had this problem and the phone co put filters on the phones. I think on at least one phone we still had trouble and added some more filters.
Where are the nearest neighbors? Is it possible that they just have the stereo in their house turned up too loud?
Yeah this- There are a number of ways for your bank data to be obtained that have nothing to do with your phone actions. Someone listening to your phone line for numbers is about the least likely way of all for that to happen.
Only music?
You haven’t heard anything else, have you? Like a beating heart?
Is the house built on an ancient orchestral burial ground?
An AM receiver is a really simple circuit, essentially it is just a capacitor. Ok, it takes a bit more than that to build a good quality, high gain receiver, but the heart of the circuit that does the demodulation is a capacitor.
Therefore, a badly designed speaker with enough stray capacitance can potentially act under ideal circumstances as an AM receiver.
Of course it can be something really mundane, like a contractor forgetting a portable battery operated radio behind the drywall. You mentioned that the house is newly built and these radios can keep going for some time.
Actually the key part in an unpowered, basic radio is a diode. Crystal radios can be made with just a diode (or crystal or razor blades or …), an antenna and an earphone. (And once in my case, a jammed filling in a tooth.) A lot of materials can act as a diode when dissimilar conductors come in contact. It’s the electrical -> sound wave part that is non-trivial.
If you see a capacitor in a crystal radio, chances are it’s being used for tuning, not demodulation.
Seconded…
we also had this exact same problem at my Mom’s house, it was a Spanish station and the “ghosts” spoke Spanish
No need to shut off the breakers, simply turning off the fan devices is enough to bring the silence. I have to have a white noise to sleep to… period. We wired the house our self, but we had lots of shady workers come and go. The tv/radio noise starts up suddenly, usually at night but has happened during the day. I know there is a issue but fear we will never find the problem. It has to have something to do with the tower, or simply the free to air stations that can be picked up through a tv. I think the metal box fan is acting as a receiver of sorts. My dog even barks at the fan. Oddly if you get close to the fan it doesn’t seem to come from it directly, it’s just clearly in the room. Turn off the fan and there is silence. None of this noise happened till the phone line came. But how could that affect the electrical. I have never experienced anything like this… Thinking of selling the house =(
Thank you kayT, Dog80, ftg, and Ann Hedonia for your answers.
Did you find an answer to this?
I was thinking of an AM envelope detector which is just a diode in series and a cap in parallel. But yes, you are right, the detector would work with just the diode.
The sound might come out a bit weird without the cap, but definately recognisable as music or speech.
BTW, I was toying around with a piezo siren yesterday. I desoldered one wire of the piezo speaker from the high frequency generator circuit and I could still hear the siren faintly. Probably the desoldered wire acted as an antenna and picked up enough energy to drive the speaker.
RF coupling is funny!
No there is no change. It comes and goes.
Why not replace the box fan? Get a much better quality one and see if it doesn’t make all the difference.
You did the wiring yourselves? With lots of shady workers? Was it inspected and signed off on, by a city or municipality, by any chance?
I’m sure that is necessary, but here it is a racket. A guy licensed by the state installed a load center for me, but we had to pay for one of the Good Old Boys companies to stare at it before the city inspectors would condescend to stare at it and ok it. 
Well here I am again… I know in part what I hear. I don’t know why but here goes. None of this started till the phone line was brought in. I still don’t understand what it has to do with it. The music, and/or talking, and/or laughing comes and goes. The last couple of weeks I have been woke up by it as it can get real loud. Sometimes it has so much activity it almost could be described as busy bees locked in a jar. But it seems in the morning it is single and more clear. We have a TV, don’t use it but for years I did watch the news. Well about a week ago I clearly heard someone familiar. It was the opening for the 11 o’clock news. I heard “All this and more coming up at 11…” My room is on the second floor and when I have chose to try to turn the TV on there is good reception for several channels. Channel 5 (strong signal) has three channels. One regular, one for old movies, and one for talk TV. This is what is playing on the fan. Sometimes just one sometimes lots of channels. The radio waves must be stronger in my room. I can go in a different room and usually hear nothing but the fan itself. Now there is a twist to this. The router plays a part. I have the fan on 24/7 (bed bound). I can clearly tell you when the noise kicks on. When my daughter gets home It will start! She has a I-Phone 5, also a I-Pad. She has downloaded so many things to her laptop and devices. Like Icloud, skype, frostwire, Itunes, etc… so when she is home plan on some noise… We lost internet on Christmas and I was trouble shooting it and one of the issues given was to much Radio wave disturbance. Try moving the router. I found this interesting. Well now I know what is going on at least in part. Makes sense since the 3 channels alone can explain why sometimes it is talk, sometimes laughing and sometimes almost recognized old movies/shows. The worst is when the “Bees” play. There is still more to this and one day I will post more. I wonder if there is a filter or something to help stop this madness …