Dowsing the Fire

 

A BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) presenter, John Humphrys, recently stirred up quite a ruckus when he asked a professor from the University of Hertfordshire a question and the prof responded, “Theres no evidence to think there’s anything to it.”

Humphrys said, “Oh dear. I’m now going to have to tell you about a personal experience of my own.”  He proceeded to give evidence that disagreed with the respected expert.

Since then he has been widely mocked for his belief in “magic”.

Well, my readers understand that I like using science to disprove myths, old wives tales, and other fallacies.

The problem is, I agree with Humphrys.

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John Humphrys was interviewing Richard Wiseman, a professor from the University of Hertfordshire who has spent 20 years researching the psychology of luck and the paranormal, specifically about divining, also called dowsing or water-witching, which sees practitioners hold two divining rods or similar items which they believe detects the presence of water or other things underground.

Professor Wiseman explained, “It’s been tested many, many times under many different circumstances and when people don’t know where the water is then they’re not very good at finding it with their rods that magically cross using forces we have no idea about.

“Theres no evidence to think there’s anything to it.”

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That’s when Humphreys told his experience.  “I brought in a dowser for that little farm I bought in Wales. The well had run dry and it needed a bore hole.  I brought in a dowser and he found a wonderful supply. Now OK you could say that was a bit of luck and he knows the land and all that.”

“However, a few years later we’d laid the pipe and all that and I brought in a man to plough the field above the house and the water stopped in the house. He cut through the pipe.  And the bloke said to me, ‘look go and dowse it’, and he gave me a bent coat hanger and all that and I felt a total fool walking up and down this field.  And then, kapow, the thing bent forward – I couldn’t stop it – I felt a force; I really did.  And he dug down and I did it again thinking ‘this is just stupid’, but he dug down and there was the cut pipe where this had happened.

He concluded with a challenge, “I know it’s not science but explain it.”

Professor Wiseman admitted it was curious but pointed out that many people would have tried the practice and had no luck.

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The “Twitter-net” erupted with skeptical people, most of whom made fun of the announcer for believing in “magic.”

Clearly, the skeptics believe that, if science can’t prove or explain something, it cannot exist.

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Humphrys’s discussion with Wiseman took place a day after it came out that almost all of the United Kingdom’s water companies use dowsing rods to detect leaks and pipes.  In turn, that revelation came when another scientist, Sally Le Page, wrote an incredulous blog post after witnessing an engineer use two bent tent pegs while working at her parents’ home.

Scientist Le Page wrote, “Just because the rods move doesn’t mean they are moving in response to water underground. The rods move when the person subconsciously moves their hands.  Every properly conducted scientific test of water dowsing has found it no better than chance.”

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Now, I’m a pretty skeptical guy.  Many times people have told or shown me some pretty incredible things.  With few exceptions I’ve been able to come up with a very logical explanation for what caused the mysterious phenomenon.

Except for divining.

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Annie and I had bought a farm outside Centralia, MO and were busy making it the kind of place we wanted it to be.

I was planning a new shed and pen for livestock.  I mentioned to David, a visiting friend, that I was going to lay a water pipe out to the new enclosure, which would require digging through probably forty feet of dense, gravelly soil.  I wasn’t looking forward to it.

He told me that there was already a water line out there.  The former owner of the farm had taken up the spigot but plugged the plastic pipe and left it.  My helpful friend then made an X in the dirt, saying, “The end should be around here.”

“Should be.”

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It just so happened that another friend visited a few days later.  Byron is an agronomist who lived most of his life on a farm.  More, he was the son of an old-time farmer.  During our conversation, I mentioned to Byron that I was relieved to find that I probably wouldn’t have to lay a pipe but joked that I wasn’t looking forward to digging multiple holes in the hard-packed gravel if my other friend had been mistaken.

Now, the agronomist was a kidder so I didn’t take him seriously when he asked, “Have you tried dowsing for it?”

In response to my amused chuckle he told me to bring him a wire coat hanger.  I produced the hanger which he cut into two pieces each about two feet long.  He bent them into L shapes.

Then he handed them to me!

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At Byron’s prompting I held one of the wires in each fist loosely so that they could swing lazily with any movement from me.  Then, with the wires pointing forward, I walked slowly toward the X that David had shown me.

Nothing.

Byron ignored my self-satisfied smirk and told me to step to the side and walk back.  I did.

Nothing.

Byron prompted me to repeat the process.  I was running out of patience with my friend’s obvious prank when, suddenly, the wires turned in my loose grasp until they crossed!  Another couple steps and they actually turned back toward me.

Byron had me repeat the process and the dowsing rods crossed again at the exact same spot.  It was within six feet of the spot where David had guessed the end of the pipe to be.

I shook my head and scoffed, “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!”

My friend took the wires from me and imitated my process, but in a direction perpendicular to mine.  The rods crossed in the same spot.  Byron kicked a spot in the dirt and said, “Get a shovel.”

Not waiting for further instruction, I retrieved my spade and started digging in the hard earth.  The excavating got easier after I got through the layer of gravel.  Two feet down from the surface, I unearthed a black, plastic pipe.

Yup.  Not only was it the pipe I’d been told about, but it was the very end of the it; the one with the plug in it!

“How in the heck did that work?” I asked incredulously.

Byron explained that we had searched in a grid and that it was thanks to David’s guess that we had started so close to the exact spot.

Thanks, David.

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Byron, with his scientific background, was a surprise advocate for a very unscientific technique for finding water.  I told him so.

He laughed and explained that there are a lot more scientific methods for finding water, but they were also more difficult and more expensive.  He had learned about dowsing and tried it.  He couldn’t find any scientific reason NOT to use it.

Hmmmmm, OK.

My friend went on to tell me that divining doesn’t work for everyone and that he had found no connection between whether someone believed in it or not, but he thought open-mindedness helps.

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I have since done some research and found that there are other methods of dowsing that different people prefer.  Some go back to the old-fashioned forked stick that we see in old movies.  Others prefer the bent wires, or even pendulums.  Besides that, proponents use the method to find buried pipes, electrical lines, jewels, minerals, or of course, treasure.  The only thing I have had any experience with is dowsing for water.  I have also spoken to city workers who swear by it for finding old, undocumented water pipes.

I think divining is cool.  If I get a chance to use it to find buried treasure, I’ll think it’s absolutely divine!

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

 

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