Now this has been going on for about two years (that I've noticed)--when I'm on the landline phone with Dottie I can hear someone exhaling on the phone line. The thing about Dottie is, she talks very loudly and non stop,  so loudly that I prop the phone on my shoulder and once in a while I say Uh Huh while she goes on.
It's not her doing the breathing--she rarely shuts up long enough to take a breath. It's not me, the phone is nowhere near my mouth, but I  can hear these exhalations. I called AT&T and they ran a check on the line and said they found nothing wrong. But after I bitched about it continuing, they got a technician to check the relay box (buried in a ditch about a mile from the house.)
One year, after heavy rains, water got in in the wires and they touched each other, then we had a party line--everybody on this trunk could hear one another talking. I don't want a party line, dammit! So the tech, sounding annoyed, got down in the ditch and reported the wires were okay. Then he phoned from the cinder block house in town where the switching station or whatever they call it is located. He said everything checked out clear from there, too.
But since then the heavy breather sounds have decreased--maybe because whom-ever it is knows I'm aware they are listening. I joke with Dottie that in "Tricky Dicky Cheney" and "Mouthpiece Georgie" days, when I was giving them hell--maybe they tapped into my line. This sounds paranoid, but I don't care--I hear what I hear. So I make sure I let Dottie go on and on about her father's constipation and her intestinal problems--if someone wants to hear long talks about shit and guts and old boyfriends, (and old boyfriends fit nicely into talk of crap, don't they?) then go on and listen in sweetie if it turns you on.
Bye y'all, susil