THE SUBTLE ENERGY OF DOWSING
(Original headline: Water Witching )
7/5/06

Is Dowsing For Wells A Superstition Or An Uncanny Ability?

Joe Will walks across the hill, a fresh-cut fork of maple in his hands.
He's near where he drilled the 100-gallon-a-minute well pumping water to
the chicken houses on his farm, and the stick seems to know it.
As he passes over a patch of grass — a patch that looks pretty much
like every other patch on this 130-acre tract of land straddling the
Augusta County border near Bridgewater — the end of the stick dives
down.
"I don't know why the stick goes down," he says, matter-of-factly. "I
don't know if it's something in your body or magnetic fields or what —
I just know it works."

Will is an amateur practitioner of water witching, also known as water
dowsing.
Using a forked stick that dips or two L-shaped wires that cross, Will
says he can pinpoint a vein of water. Bobbing another stick over the
spot, he estimates how deep it is.
Will says he has no idea why witching works and, truth be told, he
doesn't much care. Will is only worried about his chicken houses, and
they have beaucoup water from a fairly shallow well.
"Everybody's entitled to an opinion but if I needed another well for
myself or my family I'd have it witched," he says.
Witching is a skill Will learned a long time ago, he says, and it's
served him well.
And just as he's not sure how witching works, he's not sure why he can
do it and other folks can't. "Some people can witch, some can't," he
said. "You either can witch or you can't."

It's Not Just For Water
In addition to witching for water, Will says he can find power lines and
buried pipes.
There are some people who take it a lot further, says Arvid Johnson,
operations manager for the American Society of Dowsers.
The Vermont-based organization has a few water dowsers, but most members
are interested in dowsing for other objects. Sometimes, they just dowse
for the answer to yes or no questions, watching what the stick does to
get their reply.
"Dowsing is a way to discover subtle energy," said Johnson. "[It] allows
your body's innate or non-recognizable feelings to be sensed by an
instrument."

ASD members don't have a consensus opinion on how dowsing works, says
Johnson, but most think it taps into energy in the human body, not by a
dowsing rod that senses something in the "actual, physical realm."
There's nothing about a sap-filled stick that senses water, he says. In
fact, few members of the ASD use wooden sticks, preferring plastic. A
few don't use any device at all, just their hands.
"We all have thought patterns and energy patterns in our body that we
don't necessarily have the ability to contact directly," he said.

Fooling Themselves?
In a way, Joe Nickell, senior research fellow at the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, agrees with
Johnson.
Nickell says science has shown dowsing works by energy in the human body
— just not how Johnson claims.

"What causes the dowsing rod to move is involuntary muscular control,"
he said. "The dowsers are subtly moving the dowsing rod."
Nickell, who worked as a magician and a private detective before landing
his current gig as (so far as he knows) the world's only full-time, paid
paranormal investigator, doesn't think most dowsers are setting out to
trick anyone.
"In general I've found them to be a colorful, likeable lot and generally
sincere as far as I could tell," he said. "They're fooling themselves.
They are unconsciously causing the movement."
His theory is backed up by scientific studies, he said. When instruments
have been attached to dowsers hands, they've shown movement and when
dowsers have been asked to find water under carefully controlled
conditions, they've failed.
"This is well-established science," he said. "Anyone who says otherwise
is not talking science."

Nickell has personally conducted tests on gold dowsers in the Yukon and
found nothing to back up their claims.
"Although they agreed in advance to the test invariably when the control
test shows that they do not have any dowsing ability they begin to
rationalize why the test was not quite proper," he said.
Nickell points to a million-dollar prize sponsored by another skeptic,
James Randi, offered to anyone who can prove dowsing ability.
"Randi has tested a lot of water dowsers and they haven't been
successful under carefully controlled circumstances," he said. "It's
just a superstition."

How Deep Is It?
When Will witches, he isn't relying on his stick alone. By using a
geographic map that shows where underground water is likely to be found,
along with a forked stick, Will says he's able to find the right spot
for a well. "It's just another tool," he said.
Will also has another trick, one he says isn't as common. By bobbing
another green maple branch over the spot he's found by witching, Will
says he can estimate how deep it is.
He multiplies the number of bobs the stick takes before it stops by
three, and that's where the drill will hit water.

The well that feeds his chicken houses — at 100 gallons a minute it
gives four times as much water as he needs for his house and cattle
combined — is about 180 feet deep. Holding the stick just above the
ground, he watches it bob.
"I've heard them say you can dig far enough down and you'll get water
anywhere," he says. "Maybe you can, I don't know, but this works."
Cathy Rexrode, who has a farm in northern Augusta County, says Will
guessed within 10 feet how deep her well would be, using that method.

Her well, which Will witched 14 years ago, is still going strong, she
said, as is the one he witched for her father.
Rexrode wasn't much of a believer in witching and she still isn't
completely sold, although she felt the stick move in her hand at one
point. But, considering the cost of a new well, she said witching makes
sense.
"I just figured when you spend all that money you need all the help you
can get," she said. "It couldn't hurt a thing."

What Do You Have To Lose?
Will says he knows a few other farmers who can witch, but they don't
make a big deal of it. He even knows a well driller who uses the
technique, though he'd never admit it in public, Will says, since most
well drillers think it's baloney.

Gary Burner of Burner Well Drilling in McGaheysville says his company is
happy to drill wherever the customer wants, witched or not, so long as
it's all right with the health department.
"We neither are opposed to it or promote it," he said.
Burner said as many as 25 percent of the customers his company works
with have their wells witched. People who believe in water witching are
sincere, Burner said, but "I wouldn't do it, personally."

Either way, witching can't hurt, says Will. He uses a geological map, so
he's starting in the same area any expert would. If you really can find
water anywhere if you dig deep enough, what's the harm with witching?
Nickell, the paranormal investigator, says it's usually not a problem.
"Nevertheless, any ignorance and superstition begets other ignorance and
superstition," he said.
Will doesn't see it that way. He's seen too many informal tests where
witchers have found the same spot to think there's nothing behind the
phenomenon.

Besides, "It doesn't hurt to get the map and have someone witch it. What
do you have to lose?"

.:Story originally published by:.
Rocktown Weekly / VA | Martin Cizmar - July 05.06