Hmmm…pretty interesting.

Let me ask a few questions so I can visualize this in my head.  There is a piano in the home on the first floor, correct?  You stated that you were in the basement when you heard it playing.  Were you in the basement everytime that you heard the "tune?"  Was your cousin also in the basement when she heard it?

Also, how long did it play for?  5 seconds?  20 seconds?  Did the time vary at all or was it consistant?  How loud was it (was it as loud or softer compared to hearing your mother actually play and you were in the basement)?

Lastly, is it relatively easy to hear noises from the first floor in the basement?  Such as voices, footsteps, TV…that sort of thing.  And were there any children's toys capable of producing music around at that time?

The more information that we have, the more possibilities that we can rule out. 

What about the possibility of the neightbours playing the piano and the spot you were in was conductive to sound from outside?

My mother used to play piano also and you could hear it down the street.

Mary said:

The sound was about as loud as you would expect a piano to sound from one level down, and it could only be heard in that one area.  My best guess would be the furnace was making some odd noise, but it was sure strange that it sounded like a piano being played.

No, there were no toys around.  You can hear the TV, talking and footsteps upstairs, but what was odd about this was the noise was exactly the same every  time.    

The same exact sounds heard only in one particular area.  I have a story to share:

My home is built on a rather large pond.  Other homes are also built around it.  There is a sidewalk that encircles the pond.  Very nice to walk the dog around.  So, one night I'm walking the dog around the pond and the dog suddenly stops.  Since we have ducks, geese, cranes, and other visitors to the pond, I quickly closed the distance to my dog to see why she had stopped.  That's when I heard the voices.

It was late, maybe one in the morning, so there was no one around that I could see.  I took a step forward and the voices stopped.  I took a step backwards and there were the voices again.  Odd, I thought.  I took steps in different directions and figured out that the voices had maybe a two foot diameter.  Outside that two foot diameter, only silence.

Well, it was weird, but I felt that the voices were simply coming across the pond.  The dog and I made our way around the pond and sure enough, a couple were on their deck just chatting.  I meant to post this story in the "Nothing To See Here" section, but never got around to it.

Now…back to Mary.  The first thing I thought of when I read your answers to my questions was something called Sound Localization.  It's basically a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in distance and direction.  It's also a very tricky thing, as my own personal example shows.

If one hears something like music from a piano and one has a piano in the home, the automatic conclusion would be that the music is coming from that piano.  But, not necessarily.  Learjet brought up an excellent point that the music may not have been coming from your house at all, it may have only appeared to be.

You also mention that a possibility could be the furnace.  Maybe.  But in the many years that you were there, it only happened a handful times roughly together in a short time span and then it suddenly stopped.  Since you didn't mention that the furnace was repaired or replaced, I would assume that it was in decent working condition.  Perhaps the weather could be a factor then.  Still, it would be hard to argue since you never heard the "tune" since the first batch of occurances.  So, I'm doubting the furnace.

We have music coming from an unknown source only being heard in one particular area for a very short time.  It's impossible to test since this happened years ago and we can no longer recreate the same environment.  So, where does this leave us?  Well, the logical approach would be to believe the source of the tune was coming from an outside source, most likely a TV or a radio (perhaps hearing the theme music to a particular show…would explain why the "tune" was always the same).

Or, Oubliette brought up other alternatives.  And really, I'd go with one of hers.  The reason?  First, it makes for a much better story.  Two, I have absolutely no evidence to determine whether or not the source of the music was normal or paranormal.  And third, it's a pretty cool personal experience that has kept with you for a very long time and we can always use a little wonder and mystery in our lives…     

Mary said:

Thanks for all the responses! 

I have to doubt the 'piano' was coming from a different house, because our home is on a large lot (almost 2 acres) and the nearest house is approx. 500 feet away, and past a LOT of pine trees. 

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In my example, the distance from myself and my dog to the couple across the pond was roughly 400-450 feet.  So sound, even a simple conversation between two people, in the right circumstances, can travel quite far.  However, this was across water, not through trees.  Elevation may now come into play.  Weather conditions.  Actually…a ton of things.  Without seeing the house and the surrounding area, it's almost impossible to tell.  So really, there's no way for me to prove or disprove that it was paranormal.  In any event, it's still a pretty cool experience.  I'm glad you shared it. 

The Ghostly Wind- I've never been a huge fan of wind, breezes, or even cold spots as proof of the paranormal.  There are just too many variables and not enough scientific measurements to define particular events.  For example, wind ruffling one's cloths, but not the trees above or the leaves below is certainly odd.  Yet, we have seen pictures of how a tornado has blown through a neighborhood and left the houses on the right and left alone, but the center house is completely gone.  So is the wind ruffling just their cloths unusual?  Yes.  Is it paranormal?  I would say highly doubtful.

The Ghostly Paper Towels- Now this is very unusual.  If the house was empty, then I can offer no explanation.  If the man is of sound mind and character and you believe that his statement can be trusted, well…then you've got a pretty strange event there.  Might be fun to set up some web-cams around to see if you can catch anything on video.  Then if you do…immediately come back to the website and post it! 

Revenant,

This might not be relevant to these reported descriptions but I'm familiar with how water transmits conversations.  We learned that on a boat one morning on the Chesapeake.  The previous night we had been having what we thought was a quiet conversation on deck.  The next morning, while having breakfast with friends of ours a few boats down, they laughingly revealed they had heard the whole story.  It was quite embarassing and a very valuable lesson.

Now you know I'm not scientific but is there any possibility that this is similar in some way to the Whispering Gallery?  I had never heard of it until I was in St. Paul's Cathedral and actually experienced it.  Very strange.  I'm probably way off but here's a link from Berkeley Labs:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/01/22/plasmonic-whispering-gallery-microcavity-paves-the-way-to-future-nanolasers/