Phil Stine walked a grid pattern with Frank Assazi in search of water with the aid of a Y-shaped willow stick on Mr. Assazi's land in Merced, Calif. Posted on 10/11/2008 9:02:58 AM PDT by BGHater
Phil Stine is not crazy, or possessed, or even that special, he says. He has no idea how he does what he does. From most accounts, he does it very well.
“Phil finds the water,” said Frank Assali, an almond farmer and convert. “No doubt about it.”
Mr. Stine, you see, is a “water witch,” one of a small band of believers for whom the ancient art of dowsing is alive and well.
Emphasis, of course, on well. Using nothing more than a Y-shaped willow stick, Mr. Stine has as his primary function determining where farmers should drill to slake their crops’ thirst, adding an element of the mystical to a business where the day-to-day can often be painfully plain.
Asked how he does it, Mr. Stine has a standard retort.
“I just tell people,” Mr. Stine said, “it’s the amount of lead” in your haunches.
Scientists pooh-pooh dowsers like Mr. Stine, saying their abilities are roughly on par with a roll of the dice. But witches have been much in demand of late in rural California, the nation’s biggest agricultural engine, struggling through its second year of drought.
The dry period has resulted in farm layoffs, restrictions on residential and agricultural water use, and hard times for all manner of ancillary businesses, like tractor dealerships and roadside diners.
“There is a domino effect to the point that a little clothing store goes out of business in a town, because the people living there move on,” said Doug Mosebar, the president of the California Farm Bureau.
Phil Stine walked a grid pattern with Frank Assazi in search of water with the aid of a Y-shaped willow stick on Mr. Assazi's land in Merced, Calif.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I can dowse our private water system lines easily. There’s really nothing to it, but some people just can’t do it. I’ve never tried for deep water, like a well. Probably couldn’t do that.
Just had a dowser check my property for a location to dig a well. After digging, we found he was off by 15’ in depth, and 30 GPM. Not bad in my book. Total depth, including res., 120’, 30GPM.
What a load of nonsense. This has been a proven fraud since world famous dowsers tried to take the Amazing Randi’s $10,000 bet. They all lost. It is a primitive superstition.
I was living on military housing about ten years ago and an engineer/soldier came by to mark out utility lines so digging could be done the next day.
My son was four and a very friendly guy. Couldn’t resist chatting with a visitor. Before I could get out there, they’d struck up a friendly conversation. I sat on the patio and let the kindred souls entertain each other while the guy continued his work.
After awhile, the guy asked if I minded him showing my son about dowsing. I didn’t think much about dowsing, but it didn’t bother me, so I said sure. He asked me for a couple of coat hangers, which I provided.
After a few minutes, my son was screaming and giggling in delight as the hangers twisted in his hands. The young man was grinning and finally drug me into the yard to show me how it was done.
I swear, the hangers moved by themselves. At times I tried to grip as tightly as I could to keep them still. They crossed at the same points as I walked back and forth across the yard. I could actually feel an almost magnetic pull of the hangers as they crossed.
The young man explained that they’d cross over most anything, a water line, deep natural water, an electrical line... According to him, a good dowser could “feel” the difference.
And the weirdest part? My daughter couldn’t do it. The hangers would never move for her.
The one experience I ever had with a water-'douser' was when I was at a oil drilling well site in the Panhandle, and a middle-aged man drove up with his young daughter. He explained that he a was graduate of a water-dousing school in North Carolina, and that his daughter had inherited his gift. We let them walk around with his stick out of curiosity, and he predicted oil around 4500 ft. deep.
WRONG! We hit water at that depth! True story.
witching for water is bout the only way it's done round here...
It’s funny - no one believes that it works unless they themselves can do it.
Never used a stick, but I’ve used two wires. The wires swing and cross when you’re over water (or a metal conductor, I’ve found).
Yeah, everyone who can’t do it, or has never tried, will call it nonsense. Doesn’t bother me any.
I worked for the Power company here in Ky years ago (LG&E)
They had a guy who worked in the underground department who could find underground lines with dowsing rods. I saw him do it on several occasions. We could put a signal or “tone” on a cable and use a meter to trace it out but sometimes this didn’t work. They would call him over and he would use 2 metal rods that were bent at 90 degree angles. He would walk around with the rods until they started moving and finally crossed. He always found the cable. Pretty amazing to me.
Just read your post. It does work, I know it for a fact. Read post 11.
I’m with you on this. But it seems we are in the minority here. And since were now minority’s do we get special treatment from the One?
Being in the rational minority gets you nothing but heartache from the One.
Remember, I was the skeptic when this happened. I made sure to keep my hands level, I tightened my grip. I did everything I could to hold the rods still. And yet they insisted on crossing. I went over a point where they crossed to see if they'd cross over the same point. (If they crossed randomly, I'd simply say “neat” and move on. But they didn't.)
The engineer said that the army routinely used dowsing when they were having difficulty finding a line.
Don't know what to tell you, but I'm going to believe what I experienced for myself.
It has been tested scientifically and it doesn’t work. There is no physical mechanism for it to work. It is literally witchcraft.
Yes, and some people who CAN do it have the coat hangers turn outwards, instead of the normal inwards.
It’s a very cool trick; people swear you’re manipulating the hangers until they try it themselves.
I’ve seen it: A guy I knew brought his German father-in-law (visiting; he couldn’t even speak English) to my house and claimed he could do it, and that he could also find silver.
My reaction was the same as yours. We went outside, he trimmed a “Y” shaped branch and proceeded to find water. He didn’t know where the sewer and water lines were, but I did, and he found them. I was watching the branch and his hands closely and saw the twig turn in his hands. I didn’t see his hands move at all.
Meanwhile, my friend (who hadn’t believed it either) quietly went inside and hid a silver coin under a table leg. I was in on that attempted trick, but the guy also found that after we called him into the house.
You believe whatever your heart desires. All I know is that I found all 29 connections to our water system. Saved us many hours and lots of money.
Sorry, but it DOES work.
Maybe you should try it.
Maybe, but about 30 years ago a local dowser walked across four staked wildcat oil drilling locations and then (correctly) identified the two which would produce, the two which would prove to be dry holes, and the approximate depth of production in the two which made oil wells.
As the one well was predicted to be productive in a geological interval which was not normally productive (but was in that well), I think there might be something to it.
He batted 1.000 on his picks, and the odds would be astronomical against that.
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