Re: Titty finding water with a forked stick


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Posted by Robert Dilley on November 19, 2003 at 21:19:37 from 65.39.15.73 user rdilley.

In Reply to: Re: Titty finding water with a forked stick posted by David Brooks on November 19, 2003 at 14:55:49:

David's explanation is as good as anything I could provide. Ross, you have at least one acquaintance for whom dowsing does not work: namely me.

Over 20 years ago we wanted to drill a new well to replace our inadequate dug one. I had no idea where to drill (no handy rushes around -- anyway, water on our property is running in cracks in the Precambrian Canadian Shield and not near the surface). A friend claimed to be able to dowse. He wasn't charging anything, so I felt I had nothing to lose. He duly cut a forked twig, walked around, and pronounced that there was water 25 feet below a specific spot. He invited me to try, but nothing whatever happened. He even experimented with him holding one branch of the twig and me the other. He said he could feel it move -- I couldn't.

Anyway, water was found -- at 45 ft, not 25. But it was a very strong stream and maybe the flow quantity made it feel closer?

Later, as four daughters began to make heavy demands for showers and laundry, we decided on a third well. This time the driling company had a dowser on staff, who use a metal bar balanced on his finger. They drilled on the spot indicated and struck a major flow that has sufficed for all our needs for several years.

So am I convinced dowsing works? Not entirely. If it does, it seems to me the most plausible explanation is that involuntary muscle movements are responsing to environmental clues. I suspect many cases are "Roger situations" -- the dowser making a production of finding water where he already knew it would be. I would be more convinced if we had had half-a-dozen other wells drilled at random and had all or most of them come up dry -- but I can't afford that kind of search for truth!

At the Ambleside TARS AGM in 1994 we had a mass dowse-in with bent wire coathangers for underground foundations around the site of the putative "North Pole". Didn't do anything for me then, either, though others (including some of my daughters) said it did for them. There are even people who claim to be able to locate buried treasure or missing persons by dangling objects over maps. My scepticism comes into full play in these cases. I am not going to be convinced by anecdotal stories of success until I get a full account of all the failures.

Still, it made a good chapter in Pigeon Post -- and that is surely what is really important.



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