Does Dowsing Work?

Does Dowsing Work?
October 9, 2008
by Rob Dreher
Crunchy Con

The NYT today reports on how the California drought has meant lots of work for dowsers, also known as "water witches." What do you think about dowsing? I have a little bit of experience with it.

When I was a kid, my dad had some rental properties, and would sometimes be called out to fix broken water lines. He'd need to know where the underground water pipes were. I don't know where he got the idea, but he would dowse to find them. He'd take two thin wires -- straightened coat hangers, usually -- and bend them at a 90 degree angle near one end. He'd put the short end in each hand, make a loose fist, and bring the fists together. The long ends of the wires would be pointing out, parallel to the ground. He would hold them loosely enough so that they could move freely.

And then he'd walk in the direction of where he thought the pipes were. Without fail -- seriously, without fail -- when he'd step over the underground pipe, the wires would cross.

He had me do it too, and it worked. But here's the weird thing: whenever I would cross over a water source, rather than cross each other, the wires would shoot apart, in the opposite direction.

My sister, who is in most ways like my father physically and emotionally, had the same reaction with the wires as my dad. My mother, whom I resemble more than my father, had the same reaction as my dad. I can't imagine why.

Here's the really freaky part.

My father discovered by accident that the dowsing technique works to help find lost graves. Out where they live, there's a cemetery, the oldest part of which predates the Civil War. The gravestones were lost over the decades, and the grass and underbrush grew so uncut for so long there that it was impossible to discern where the older graves were. The cemetery board, on which my dad sat at the time, needed to know this for surveying purposes. But how were they to figure this out?

My dad got out his dowsing wires, and found them. Sure enough, whenever he'd step on a piece of ground that had a grave under it, the wires would cross. He tested this in the known cemetery. The wires behaved the same way. When I came home to visit from Washington (this was in the 1990s), he took me to the cemetery -- both the known one and the hidden one -- to see if it worked for me. Indeed it did -- and, just like with the water business, the wires separated when I stood over graves.

That kind of creeped me out, and I didn't want to mess with it anymore. My dad doesn't think there's anything spiritual or supernatural about this, that it's just some form of magnetism that we don't fully understand. I'm inclined to agree. One thing I do know for sure is that this stuff works. Why it works and how it works, I dunno. But I've seen it and done it.

I have heard that some people use dowsing in an attempt to divine the future. That is certainly forbidden to Jews and Christians, because it does involve communing with dark spiritual forces. But looking for water? I think there must be a materialist explanation. What do you think?