First, this is no joke, and it’s not ghosts. I have been hearing noises under my house, there is a large above ground basement with garage door access (now locked) Have been hearing these voices under the house for some time and decided to record them. I can hear the whispers but can make out very few of the words, but some are clear. I believe they can see me as well from what I’ve heard. I have checked every spot in the basement, there are two apartments attached as well, and checked with those tenants, both let me check their units, nothing. This has been going on for a while and I need to get the police involved, but don’t want to look like a fool. And I don’t think they will find anyone just as I have not. I also added a light which stays on, a web cam, standard and it was mysteriously broken, and have locked the door with a padlock, still I can find nobody when I look. I’m not crazy, although I was beginning to wonder, and now I have the recordings. The problem is I can barely use a computer and audacity was a program I was just goofing with. I have tried noise removal and amplification but that makes it worse in some cases. Can anyone help? Again, I am a novice, but would gladly send the file (would need help doing that) if someone could try to make it more audible. Truly, I’m sort of in a rush because I think I need to involve the authorities, and being stalked is a creepy, creepy thing. Please let me know if you can explain how to fix the audio or can help with it. My sincere appreciation.
Try as we might, we can’t do forensics. It’s lovely that the script writers on the various CSI TV shows can start with trash and generate an actionable conversation, but in real life that doesn’t happen. I noticed in the recent shows they don’t even bother to pretend what they’re doing is real.
Noise Removal tools depend on a two-part show. Part one is capture the noise by itself with no performance in it. Then the tool uses that to “sense” the valuable performance. If the performance is very low, buried in noise, or fading in and out, the tools don’t work (as you found). Further, if the “show” is very low, microphone distortion and amplifier noise can be a significant part of the recording.
Any idea why your webcam failed? I’d totally start there.
If you live in an older house, there’s no shortage of oddball noises and sound pathways.
Koz
I’m not crazy either but I can hear the voices too … http://forum.audacityteam.org/download/file.php?id=8452
However they are not real : it’s something called pareidolia : the audio equivalent of the Rorschach ink-blot test.
see EVP … Electronic voice phenomenon - Wikipedia
That they are whispers and you can only occasionally make out what sounds like a word is stereotypical EVP.
Sounds pretty much like Alien Sex…
Have you taken a normal voice as input for paul stretch?
The input was a recording of a toddler running around on a hard floor : so no proper speech just babbling (and rapid footsteps).
I thank Kazlkowski, who had the only practical advice and I suppose there is little to do to bring the whispers into more focused vocabulary. And the web cam failed because it was pulled until the wires broke, not on my end. I have ordered another infared web cam and it may give me some answers. And to the others, yes they are real voices, even the police dept. could hear them…but they didn’t listen long and since they could find no one under the house, said good luck. The new web cam and extra security precautions will help but I am a fifty year old very, very grounded male and even in the 80s I wasn’t paranoid. I just wondered if anyone had had experience with this situation when using audacity…surprised there aren’t more parents trying to listen to “whispers”…Thanks again and if you do have real practical input, I would appreciate it.
We get plenty of requests for that sort of thing, but it is not an area that we can help with. As Koz said, if the whispers are buried below a sea of noise, then that’s pretty well the end of the story. “Audio forensics” is a highly specialised field, requiring specialist knowledge and expensive specialist equipment. It is not a field that we can help with.
A second pair of ears may help to identify the source of the sound. Perhaps you have a friend or relative that can stop over with you?
I agree that it is probably not ghosts, but if you tell someone that it IS a ghost, they are sure to be curious, especially if they hear it too 
Good luck with sorting it out. Sorry that we are unable to help further.
Assuming the sound is recordable , (i.e. “not crazy”), there has to be an energy source to make the noise.
The sound of water flowing though pipes, (e.g. sewer), which is then filtered by the resonant chamber that is your garage could explain it , No Stalkers or ghosties required.
Road traffic is another possible source of the sound energy , again modified by the acoustics of the garage.
Another “not crazy” option is that your garage is sufficiently quiet that it allows you to hear tinnitus …
I don’t think Tinnitus is going to cover it. I have that on occasion and mine sounds like air escaping from a tire. Constant tone or hiss. Not voice-like at all.
I’m going with either actual voices or other noises filtered through an old house. Do you have Forced Air Heat? If you have central air conditioning you do. Those are famous for ducting noises and voices around the house.
What frustrates everybody is the sound is always just above the limit of hearing and almost impossible to clearly record.
I still think the webcam is going to be valuable. If multiple people heard it it’s just a matter of finding out the source location.
There is a bird making a nest in the eavestrough at one end of the house and you would swear someone was trying to break in by tearing a hole in the roof at the other corner of the house. But when you go outside --nothing.
Do you live next to a radio station? I mean really close – like look up at the red and white towers? I go to a restaurant located in the “near field” of the KABC radio transmitter (one dog barking distant) and they get KABC on their napkin holders.
Koz
Never had tinnitus sound like voices myself , ( mine is like a faint police “nee-naw” siren but the pattern of nees and naws is not constant) , but for some people tinnitus can be interpreted by their brain as speech, ( not long coherent sentences though , just the occasional word-like sound ).