When people need honest reviews of a product or need people to weigh in on any issue, they go to Reddit and its many specialised forums. Some time ago, a Reddit user went on the “Glitch in the Matrix” subReddit that talks about “eye-witness event(s) that cannot be explained with critical thinking”. In a now-viral post, the man wrote that he could hear his fans talking. He started his post by mentioning that he was alone in the house and the electricity of the whole block was out. When the electricity came back, he thought of turning on the fans even though it was winter, but his apartment got pretty hot regardless.Just as he was about to switch on the fan, he heard voices coming from it. These were not scary voices, but it appeared as though people were talking. He explained, “It sounded like a talk show. Like you could hear people talking. Mind you, all of this is coming from my unpowered fan, did I mention that? The fan was plugged in, but I never pressed the power button and there are people and sometimes music coming from it.” He then pulled the main plug of the fan but he could still hear sounds that were like “barely audible news”.This query went viral with over 7,000 upvotes and over 500 comments. People gave him a range of answers like, he is imagining the sounds, or he is listening to the sound of his neighbour’s TV.

However, the most scientific and plausible theory about the source of the sounds coming from the fans is that the fan might be catching radio signals and then ringing these signals into sounds. Metal objects are known to pick up radio signals. However, in the majority of cases, the radio sounds reflected from the metal objects are very faint.Signalling this theory, a Reddit user wrote, “Honestly, it’s probably picking up an AM radio signal. Lots of household objects have that capacity. When signals used to be too strong, people could hear the radio in their pots and pans. I’ve even used myself as an antenna and had AM radio play through a guitar amplifier.”Another person wrote, “I’ve had something called Musical Ear Syndrome before. I could hear songs from anything with white noise. It freaked me out because I could think of a song, and then actually HEAR it, clear as day, from the object producing the white noise. I was so happy when it went away because it was so unnerving. It’s crazy what our brains are capable of.”