Posted on 02/04/2004 1:13:32 PM PST by evets
Bill Martin doesn't look like your typical witch.
He's a fourth-generation well digger, a ball cap-wearing, churchgoing 72-year-old who's still active in the family firm.
V.W.H. Campbell Jr./Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bill Martin uses a dowsing stick to check grave sites in the cemetery at Denmark Manor United Church of Christ. For 40 years, he's found unmarked graves, unmapped gas and power lines, and forgotten mines using only a forked twig or a couple of metal rods.
But he's a practical man, and he uses all the tools available to him -- including one natural and ancient water-finding method some say reaches back to Moses.
Martin is, depending on where you were raised, a "water witch," a "peacher," a "dowser" or a "diviner." Using only a forked tree twig or a couple of metal rods grasped in his callused hands, the Penn Township, Westmoreland County, man detects water flowing deep underground. For 40 years, he's found unmarked graves, unmapped gas and power lines, and forgotten mines this way.
He fails sometimes, he admits -- but not often enough to quit. And his tools cost him nothing. "The Lord provides," he says. "I'll use a stick for a while, and when it dries out, I'll throw it away and cut me another one."
Municipal water systems are displacing well diggers, and competition is keen among those who remain. Few dowsers or drillers will discuss just how many wells they do in a year.
And there are plenty of nonbelievers -- scientists and skeptics who say dowsing is self-deceptive bunkum. James "The Amazing" Randi, a Florida magician who made his fortune exposing mystical frauds, says, "The bottom line is that [dowsers] all fail when properly and fairly tested. There are no exceptions. Even after they have clearly and definitely failed, they always continue to believe in their powers."
Ray Nock, a driller whose family's been digging wells in Ross and throughout the North Hills area since 1900, disagrees.
"You mention this to a geologist, and he'll turn up his nose at you," Nock says. "But I use it plenty -- almost every time -- and come up smelling like a rose."
Even Martin, though, says the stories can be a bit extreme.
"There's plenty of people can witch wells. Some of them make all kinds of claims, like they can tell how deep it is, whether it's good to drink or not, how many gallons of flow there is. I just use it to locate streams and pipes. Even then, I can't be sure."
Dowsing came to this country with the earliest settlers and was carried over prairies to the dry places of the far west. Water witches still do their thing in India, England, Japan, Germany and South America.
Here in the United States, gas line crews, surveyors, grave diggers, and even military engineers still often "turn to the twigs" first to locate all kinds of buried utility lines, streams, tanks, or excavations. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has hired dowsers, and the Corps' chief has said he would hire a dowser under some circumstances. In 1967, the 1st and 3rd U.S. Marine Divisions in Vietnam used divining rods to locate hidden Viet Cong tunnels.
Many utility service trucks keep a pair of L-shaped rods or a forked stick stowed in the back. In England, a set of rods comes standard in every Water Board -- British for water department -- truck.
Dowsing studies done mostly in Germany and Sweden in the past 30 years credit arcane forces that often involve complicated interactions among the mind, body and nature. These phenomena have names like "neutron radiation," "biogravitation," "ley lines," "earth rays," or "the ideomotor effect."
Some Christian sects forbid dowsing because they assume the power simply comes from dark forces.
Nock believes in something much simpler and more familiar. "I think it works on static electricity," he said. "You're a charge, the water's a charge, and the cherry sapling completes the circuit."
Martin says he doesn't know why it works. To him, the proof is "in the doing of it."
"It looks real simple, and it is," said Martin, grasping the arms of a Y-shaped wild cherry twig in his hands, the single stem pointing skyward.
"Just get your thumbs out, stick out your arms out in front of you, and start walking."
He moves fast across the yard through the wintry gray sleet.
"I don't get sensations. I can just talk to you, or think about anything at all. Nothing mystical about it," he says, heading toward a tall tree, a drainage ditch, a storage shed. Halfway down the yard, the little twig twitches and turns, pointing to his chest. He slows his steps. The twig turns and points straight down.
"Water," he says. "We got three good streams running beneath us through the property, and where they join, that's where I dug my own well. But this isn't fair. I know this yard. You do it."
And so tries a visitor, who within seven strides feels the twig tug ground-ward. She feels around in the snow with her boot-toes. It's a capped-off well head.
She can't know it's down there. There's no sign of excavation, no discolored grass, no way to tell.
Martin just grins.
"You can either do it, or you can't. Don't know why," he says.
Lots of people can feel the twig or rods move in their hands, but that doesn't always mean water, says John Petrisek, proprietor of Rural Water Systems, a well-digging concern in Bentleyville, Washington County.
"I've seen it done, and I've known how for 35 years, and I don't use it. I've seen too many dry holes drilled using that method," he says. "Customers like to see it done, but I'm not a firm believer. It's fading away, as the old-timers die off. It's dying off. There are better, more scientific ways to find a good place to drill."
Martin, however, stands by his way and his record.
"I've witched and drilled wells in seven states and two countries," he says. "They have water. That's my proof."
He tried to teach me how to do it, but I could never make it work. I know the mechanics of how it's done - but it just won't work for me. My dad showed several people how to do it and they've been able to develop the skill.
Same thing here. I remember one job site where we had to do constant maintenance on buried water and electric lines. This meant we had to find lines on an almost weekly basis. The first time we had to do major maintenance, the company owner cut up a wire coat hanger and showed all the new grunts how to do it. This method not only showed when you crossed a buried line, but also the direction it was travelling. I still use it occasionally.
Try this instead: Take a wire coathanger - it has to be wire all the way around, not one of the pants hanger ones you get from the landry with the cardboard tube. Cut off the entire hook and twisted part and then cut the remaining length in half. You should have two roughly equal "L" shaped pieces. Bend the wires until you have a 90degree angle in each. Then hold one end straight up and down in each hand so that the horizontal part sticks out over the top of your hand parallel to the ground. Keeping your arms in front of you, and holding the ends loosely, walk forward until the arms swing to the sides. That's where you have the buried pipe. The arms will usually indicate the direction of the line.
Yup. I used [metal] coat hangers. The only thing I could figure was that perhaps there was a weak magnetic field from the water pipes that moved the [bent] coat hangers. It was the damndest feeling. I was expecting absolutely nothing when the hangers began their inexorable movement.
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