Dowsers claim to be able to find underground water—and sometimes other substances such as oil or gold— by walking over the ground holding a forked stick, known as a dowsing rod. When the rod is felt to make sudden movements, seemingly on its own, that is an indication that the dowser is above a source of water. Dowsing is an old and venerated folk tradition, especially in northern New England. In addition to predicting where water is, the dowser frequently also predicts the depth at which it will be found. The actions of the rod are vaguely ascribed to some sort of magnetic influence of the water, the psychic abilities of the dowser, or some combination of these. Some more modern dowsers have dispensed altogether with the need to actually walk over the land being dowsed and, instead, dowse over a map of the land in question.
A major factor in convincing people that dowsing works is the seemingly autonomous movements of the rod. As Vogt and Hyman (1979) point out, dowsing requires considerable physical effort: “The muscles and body of the diviner are under considerable tension. The rod is compressed with great force and this compression is maintained over a considerable period of time” (p. 130). Even under normal conditions of muscle tension, the feedback from the muscles that tells the brain about the degree of muscular movement is far from perfect (Matthews 1982).
The tension placed on the muscles during dowsing aggravates this situation, so the dowser is unable to feel the small muscle twitches that are responsible for the sudden movements of the rod. It is thus natural, although incorrect, to attribute these sudden movements to the rod itself and to feel that they occur without any intention on the part of the dowser.
Anecdotal eyewitness reports of the success of dowsers are also a major source of evidence for those convinced that dowsing really works. Such reports should be viewed with considerable skepticism because, as has been pointed out previously, they are frequently extremely unreliable. There is an additional factor working to enhance dowsers’ “successes” in anecdotal reports: selective memory. To quote Vogt and Hyman (1979) once again:
We know a well-driller in Massachusetts who divines all the wells that he drills. This diviner, in an interview, recounted one success after another in his water witching career; he had not one failure to report. The driller’s assistant, however, was skeptical about the value of water witching. He explained it away as “just imagination.” In a separate interview, he told one story after another of failures that followed upon a diviner’s advice. We had no reason to doubt the honesty or sincerity of either of these men. One was a believer, and, if we accepted his testimony at face value, water witching was invariably successful. From the skeptic’s accounts, however, we would gather that water witching was very unreliable, and successes with it were matters of luck. Both these men were illustrating the tendency to recall only those incidents that are in accord with what we believe or would like to believe. (p. 41)
In addition, there is a large element of the multiple out in dowsers predictions. A dowser may predict that water will be found at several locations. When water is found at any one of these, dowsing seems to have been successful. Since well drilling is likely to stop with the first successful well, later predictions that might well have turned out to be wrong won’t be tested. In addition, multiple depths may be predicted or the predicted depth may be very vague, as in “water will be found at a medium depth.” In some areas of the country, one will almost invariably find water if one drills deep enough. In these areas, the dowser will almost always be right if the well is drilled deep enough. And, of course, vague depth predictions may be forgotten or “adjusted” to become more accurate after the fact. Finally, geological clues in the land help indicate where underground water may be found. Trained geologists can use these clues to increase their accuracy at predicting where to drill to a level above chance. The dowser may often have picked up these same clues and may use them while dowsing, consciously or unconsciously.
What is obviously needed to properly evaluate the claims of dowsers are controlled studies done either in the laboratory or in the field. Vogt and Hyman (1979) review many such studies. None of them showed any evidence that dowsers could find water at an above-chance level. One very large study (Ongley 1948) examined a total of fifty-eight dowsers who claimed to be able to find water. None of them performed at a level above chance. More recent studies have had the same result. Vogt (1952) recorded the comparative numbers of dry and successful wells that had been drilled with and without the advice of dowsers. Of the twenty-nine wells drilled with dowsers’ advice, twenty-four were successful. That sounds good, until one realizes that of the thirty-two wells drilled without dowsers’ advice, twenty-five were successful. There is no statistically significant difference in the relative success rates of wells that were and were not drilled with input from dowsers. Randi (1979–80) tested four Italian dowsers. A pattern of three underground pipes was buried (Fig. 22). Any one of the pipes could have water flowing through it. The dowsers’ task was to trace the route of the one pipe that did have water flowing through it. The dowsers, who didn’t know the route of any of the pipes, were totally unable to divine the route of the one with water in it. Smith (1981–82) tested an Australian dowser named Holmes, who claimed to be able to find both water and gold. The dowser failed to find water. During the testing of his ability to find gold, a significant occurrence took place:
As is traditional in such tests, in full view of Holmes I placed the gold ingot in a box and asked him to see if his powers were working. Instead of going directly to the chosen box (as we expected him to), he walked up and down the row of boxes showing us that he received no reading from the empty boxes. He then mistook the correct box to be the one next to it and promptly divined the wrong box. His wife called out to him to “remember which box it was put in,” but to no avail. (pp. 36–37)
Although it would be easy to laugh at this dowser who can’t even find something when he’s been shown where it is, this incident illustrates an important point. Dowsers’ predictions are based on their beliefs. Holmes believed that the gold was in an empty box and the rod promptly pointed to that empty box. If a dowser believes that water is to be found at a particular location, for whatever reason, the small muscular movements that cause the rod to move become more likely to occur at that location. Thus, both the movement of the rod and the place where those movements occur are internally generated although, because of the nature of the physiology of the kinesthetic system, the dowser will have no conscious appreciation of this fact.
Some dowsers don’t use the traditional rod, but rely on a pendulum, which can be any relatively heavy and small object suspended from a string. A single key will do. The pendulum is usually held at arm’s length and is said to swing back and forth under its own power, with no attempt to induce swinging on the part of the dowser. It swings when the dowser is over water or whatever substance is being searched for. The pendulum can also be used, it is said, to divine the sex of an unborn child: Hold the pendulum over the mother’s belly and it will swing one way for a boy, the other for a girl. The pendulum has also been used to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person and to reveal all sorts of hidden knowledge.
The pendulum seems to be swinging back and forth under its own power and the one holding it claims, quite honestly, to be making no conscious attempts to influence its movement. In reality, as with the dowsing rod, small arm movements, which are not registered in the brain, are responsible for the pendulum’s movement. This can be demonstrated quite neatly by having the string that suspends the pendulum draped over some stationary object. Movement stops, even though the person is still holding the string and the pendulum is still free to swing, if there really were psychic forces causing its movement. In an interesting experiment, Easton and Shor (1975) further demonstrated the nature of the pendulum’s movement. In one case, subjects could see the pendulum they were holding, in another they couldn’t. Movement was greater when they could see it. Movement was even greater, by a factor of ten, when subjects were asked to imagine that the pendulum was moving, as opposed to when they were asked to imagine that it was not. Finally, if they observed some other type of oscillating motion, this also increased the amount of pendulum movement. None of these effects would be expected if the pendulum’s movement were caused by some psychic force. It was the French scientist Michel-Eugene Chevreul who, in 1812, carried out similar experiments showing that the movement of the pendulum was self-generated by the holder. A full English translation of his 1833 report of those experiments has been published by Spitz and Marcuard (2001). Obviously, dowsing is another example of unconscious movements (Spitz 1997) that are responsible for belief in such phenomena as the ouija board (chapter 3) and facilitated communication.
