Does dowsing work?

The only experience I've had with dowsing occurred when I was five or six years old. Apparently, it works.

I grew up in a small town in northern New England. A new house was being built next door, about a quarter mile down the road. The owner was beside himself as to where to dig the well. And so they brought in a local woman in our town -- a member of a family that had farmed there for 150+ years -- with her dowsing stick that looked like an upside-down "Y" and appeared to be cut from a sapling. The woman looked to be in her late 60s or 70s and wore wading boots (she worked a dairy farm) along with her dentures.

The whole process took less than an hour. She held the two ends of the upside-down "Y" in her two hands with the dowsing stick in an upright position, and kept pacing about the property for about 30 minutes. Then suddenly, she found a "spot" where the top end of the stick began to be drawn down. She'd move away from the "spot" and the top end would move back up. She tested this process -- moving away from and then back toward the "spot" several times -- until she announced with satisfaction that the owner MUST dig his well on the "spot" she declared to be above water.

The well was dug. Forty years later, the well continues to provide plenty of water.

As for a "materialist explanation" I'm sure an expert in water hydraulics can explain what I saw some 40 years ago.

I'm sorry, but I just do not believe any of this.

My aunt had uncanny abilities which defied rational explanation. She predicted the exact date of my uncle's death by using a ouija board and she located a well in a neighor's field without using a dowsing rod. She is still talked about in the family with almost mystical awe.

Full disclosure: she actually murdered my uncle on the date she divined and she died falling drunk into the well in the neighbor's field. Very mysterious. Divine retribution?

All of the guys working for the gas and water utilities in my hometown used to dowse to find pipes. I watched them do it dozens of times and they always hit. The weird thing is, I never thought of it as something "paranormal" until I was in my 20's and heard other people say that. I had just assumed there was some scientific principle involved, and the guys doing it (much like Rod's dad) seemed to think that too.

There is a sound scientific basis for dowsing, with an important caveat: it has long been known that the human body is sensitive to energy levels that we don't (yet) have the technology to measure.

Dowsing, regardless of the "object" for which one is searching, is based on subtle changes in magnetic fields. This has been hypothesized satisfactorally, and some day may be measured adequately to provide enough data to analyze and state in a scientific manner. As with any gap between experience and science, one can continue to make practical use of it without being able to explain it.

As for the religious implications, one need not look further than the evolution (sorry) of human knowledge around such things as electricity (lightning was long held to be "magic" in some sense) and the appearance of life labeled under "spontaneous generation", like flies "suddenly" appearing on dung. Just because one cannot see the process, it doesn't mean that it is magic.

David, your logic is flawed because objects may or may not be magnetized -- meaning they generate their own magnetic field -- but they can affect the ambient magnetic field. Astrophysics has an analogous situation: planets that do not show up on light-based sensors can be detected by their gravitational effect on light from larger, visible objects. I believe it's called the wobble effect.

They called it "water witching" where I grew up, in Montana, and several of my kinfolk could do it. It works. I have no clue how or why. The older I get, the more inclined I am to view skepticism skeptically, as anyone who is not wearing materialist blinders can see that the world is occasionally weird indeed.

Hi - saw your article on Dowsing- I think it's great that you promote or think well of dowsing - my father Louis Matacia, used dowsing with the US Marines - we both have surpassed water dowsing and use it to locate missing persons and buried treasure (with consistency and success). Our website shows many article references/credentials that show we are successful dowsers- so no matter who you are .... it works when diligent (our web site is paranormaladvisors.com )- For example:

We worked on a missing person case, a couple of years ago, the police: PA State Police insisted the gay woman ran off... not. We insisted she was murdered and used dowsing to pinpoint the search area ... not water. The search team went out the next day and found the viticm, murdered and in 45 MINUTEs, using dowsing she was located - Wow - that was a record breaker, even for us... try dowsing anything - refer to:

The Smithsonian Magazine Article, Jan. 1986, on Dowsing, by Jack Hope -Louis and I were both interviewed and Jack said he thought I was a "fraud" - so he tested many dowsers ... I was the ONly one correct .. fraud - I do not think so - DOWSING is great, the Smithsonian article proves that it has many applications ... try it. Ginette Matacia - Thanks, you won't regret trying it...

Cheezlouise, it's a truth.

If you think not find an old telephone man from the days before the fancy dancey buried cable locators in use today. They used to locate buried telephone wires using the bent metal rods accurately time after time.

I don't think it's about magnetism. That's because I still do it occasionally and I've found the key to getting a hit is movement. Waterlines, water is moving, telephone lines, electrical current, same with electrical lines, and of course let's not forget the gas lines.

What's interesting about this is to make the plastic lines like for gas and water you have to have a metal wire accompanying the line for current technology to locat it because they are metal locators. I know. It's a pulse on the line but it's carried by the metal which activates the tone in the locator.

Another interesting thing about this phenomenom from a personal perspective. I've been very good at locating lines with bent rods, usally copper ones. My dad's dad was a locally renowned witcher/dowser in northern Arizona. My dad can take the rods from my hands and walk over a known line and they won't move.

Go figure.

Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden does some dowsing when identifying optimal well drilling locations on Adam Trask's property. He doesn't know why it works either, but he thinks it's very cool that it does, which I reckon is the right attitude.

It is definitely real. My Step-grandfather owned a farm just outside of New Braunfels, TX. He was the son of German immigrants. He taught me one summer how to dowse for water on his farm. He explained that you have to take a living forked branch from a tree with smooth bark. Just hold it loosely in your upturned hands and start walking around.

He told me to try it around his barn to try to find the water lines, and it worked. Usually the branch would turn in your hands and point down. Sometimes it would point up.

He used it to find where to dig a well on some new property he bought. The people who own the land now still get their water from his well.

He also explained that the ability skips generations. We had my dad try it, and sure enough it didn't work. He explained that it's God's way of making generations work together.

I don't think it's so much spiritual or metaphysical. I think it has to do with something in the plant that can, in some way, "sense" water. I've never tried it with metal rods, but I tend to think that works by reacting to changes in the Earth's magnetic field caused by buried objects or water. Metal detectors work on the same principle, if I'm not mistaken.

It works and works well. However I was taught to use a small fresh forked branch. Walked over the water lines and it felt as though the branch was being pulled down.

Bit tired of hearing the accusations of witchcraft. If you can't explain how something works a with solid "I don't know" don't bother using the medieval "It is of the Devil" BS.

Here in the Ozarks, water witching is still done. there is nothing occult about it, even when Ozarkers were highly superstitious as a culture until recently, they never considered water witching an occult skill. It was just a talent, albeit, mysterious, that some people have. like being artistic, or a good mucision. All the oldest wells were found this way. Water witching is used all over the world. something that universal, probably has a reason for it. sometimes, like you saw, burial sites are found, minerals prospected, and lost items found. Like many psychic phenomena, if you are around it very long, it becomes quite real.

Franklin Evans: Proving that dowsing works in a given situation does not prove that all dowsing works in all situations.

The essence of the scientific method, my dear Franklin, is that if it works in one instance of a phenomenon, it will work in all instances of the selfsame phenomenon.

Dowsing is paganism. Not that I spurn paganism, mind you. I offer abundant entreaties to Aphrodite, having profited from her grace in multifarious encounters. What is the divine Sappho's prayer to the Goddess of Love? My Greek escapes me ... quelle cruelle déception.

There are basically three schools of thought about dowsing:
1) It doesn't work at all. Drill almost anywhere and you'll hit water, and the human brain has an amazing ability to remember when weird things happen, and forget when they don't.
2a) It works via the person using the subconscious clues about the location of thing being search for, such as the lay of the land, disturbed dirt.
2b) ...and there are additional unknown human senses, usually the ability to detect magnetism.
3a) It works due to some sort of physical property of the stick.
3b) It is just an outright supernatural ability.

The difference between 2 and 3 is that, if 2, in theory, an array of sensors and a computer should be able to find water just as well, once we figure out what senses people are using, whereas with 3 you'd need either a real stick or a real human being or both.

3a is just outright silly, especially as no one seems to be able to able to decide on the correct type of stick, and on this page we have people talking about wood, iron, copper, steel (coat hanger), etc. IIRC, the original lore said 'birch' only.

3b...well, either you believe in that stuff, or you don't. It is essentially 'far seeing'. The Russians spent a lot of money on that during the cold war and never got anywhere.

As for 2b, I will repeat again that the simple ability to detect magnetism would not work as a theory. Water, either standing still, or moving through the earth's magnetic field, does not affect said field in the least. Whereas, for example, cars and people walking around do.

There are ways to magnetize 'water', or technically the impurities in it, and detect it but not via the earth's magnetic field, and we're talking super-magnets and incredibly expensive sensors. If dowsers could generate those fields, strong enough to affect something 200 feet away, they'd have nearby cars and buildings flying at them. We're talking absurdly powerful magnets here, way past MRI levels...it would essentially be an MRI operating on someone hundreds of feet away. (And let's not even go into where they'd get the energy to make this field.)

Not to mention they'd also demonstrate a magnetic sensitivity literally trillions of times better than birds. (Birds, and other animals with a magnetic sense, have spectacularly poor ones, ones that barely indicate the correct quarter of the sky.) I wonder why we'd have that sensory ability and not the ability to tell north from south. Seriously, if people could sense those tiny fluctuations water would impart hundreds of feet away, the earth's magnetic field must be the equivalent of, for sound, living inside a jet engine and talking about how you can hear leaves rustle, but oddly not the jet engine.

If you're going to propose senses that don't normally exist, as I've said, then try 'humidity', which actually could reasonable be detected and linked with underground water. Although I think it's all nonsense and dowsing is 2a and 1 combined.

It's disappointing to see that people still take this medieval superstition seriously. Dowsing has been debunked thoroughly and repeatedly.

Every dowser has an anecdote about how it works, but when carefully tested... their ability is no better than flipping a coin.

For example:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i4MPz8h9gYY
Beforehand, the dowsers thought it would work. Then they were tested. Then they failed. Then - afterwards - they quickly found excuses. I bet those same people still believe they can dowse, even today.

There are plenty more examples; unfortunately, dowsers don't seem to mention the evidence that conflicts with their beliefs.

About dowsing:
there is a reasonably logical explanation for dowsing which doesn't invoke any supernatural explanation. A radio engineer in the UK experimented on himself, using the famous wire coat hangars, to test his theory that water radiates, and that the human body can respond. This response causes the muscles in the arms to contract in such a way that outstretched wrists will turn imperceptibly inwards. The natural consequence is that gravity will cause the two wires to dip downwards, and thus cross. This much is easily tested with just wires - no need for water - turn the wrists inward and the wires dip and cross.

He covered his torso with an aluminium "cloak" to shield the supposed radiation, and cut apertures in it to try to identify just where the body reacts, and found a two inch diameter area in the back which appeared to be sensitive.

Next he used his radio engineering knowledge to build a transmitter
in the range of freqencies he thought must be applicable. This device was demonstrated in a BBC television program: the transmitter was planted on one side of the River Thames near London, and from the other side he was able to row directly towards it. He said he just had to keep the boat heading in such a way that he could feel a sensation in his back.

A series of subsequent tests suggested that about one in three of us has this capacity to dowse, and it's not unreasonable to suppose that it was universal at some time in our past, but has largely atrophied from disuse. Finding water in the wild may be a matter of life or death.

Being curious, I tried the wires for myself - it worked remarkably well and, as it happens, allowed me to find a main water cock buried under years of vegetation in a ditch near our country cottage. I walked along one side of the lane and chalked a mark where the wires crossed. I repeated this on the other side of the lane and marked again - this mark was about three yards further on. Stretching string through the two marks and extrapolating into the ditch, located the water cock within inches. Builders had been searching for several days. One of my two daughters, who resembles me in many physical ways, can dowse; my wife and other daughter, who more resembles her mother, cannot.

Having only experimented with water, I have no comment on locating metal objects or graves.

Limey

Being curious, I tried the wires for myself - it worked remarkably well and as it happens allowed me to find a main water cock buried under years of vegetation in a ditch on our country cottage. One of my two daughters, who resembles me in many physical ways, can dowse with this method; my wife

Questions about dowsing paranormaladvisors.com or louismatacia.com or matacia1111@yahoo.com