When I was a child my father came home from work very excited to tell me he’d seen someone water divining in his works car park, being a complete sceptic he stood awhile to watch and obviously made such comments that he was invited to give it a try… it worked.

I tried it many times over the years… it didn’t work.

But about 20 years ago following an ad in a local paper, there was an invitation to ‘try water divining… bring your own coat hangers.’ Intrigued, both my wife and I duly went, carefully wrapped up in coats with high collars and dark glasses… I was embarrassed. We parked up at the venue… a public car park and nature reserve, along with quite a number of others… all giving strange looks to each other from the confines of our parked cars… had the Harry Lyme theme played it wouldn’t have seemed out of place, such was the mystery. Eventually one of the rangers stepped out and invited those that had come for the diving lesson to assemble in the centre. Much to my surprise scores of people stepped from their cars clutching the all important coat hangers. I think we were all shocked at the numbers… following the clipping to shape of the hangers, and a mass demonstration of what to do and what to expect… we all set off for a field some ways off picking out individuals we felt ‘safe’ to talk to. After lining up across the field, and given the instructions what to do if we got a ‘hit’ we all moved off in a line… my wife and I walked side by side for some way, and then it worked… together we dropped the hangers in unison… shocked. But it kept happening… each ‘hit’ was marked by a plastic coffee cup, eventually marking out several equally spaced lines across the field… these were the land drains put in years ago to get usage from the land.

We tried it many time all over the place, it worked… how god knows, I’m told you can either do it or not… and that most people can…

My nephew was courting a girl from the Doone Valley on Exmore for several years… her mother used to do the dowsing and her father did the drilling.
Yet there is no conclusive evidence that it works…

Has anyone ever tried it… and what’s your take on it… polite replies only please.

Dowsing "works" in the sense that any random result subjectively evaluated in isolation from the results which contradict it can be deemed to support the feasibility of anything. A good case in point is the British firm Global Technical Ltd who supply a high-tec dowsing rod called the GT200 to both the Mexican military and the Thailand Police Force. Both customers hail the GT200 as extremely succesful.

But of course there's a catch. The Mexicans use it as a drug detector. The Thais use it as a bomb detector. When each customer tested its use for the other customer's application they both described it as rubbish. Go figure ...

I took part in a double-blind water divining test carried out by UCD some years ago. The result was that those who "divined" water with a rod constituted about 20% of the total (about 300 people) and those who simply "guessed" where the water was constituted about 25% of the total. Go figure ...

(PS - I had a 100% record in locating the water with a rod. A mate of mine had a 100% record of locating a piece of ground exactly twenty yards from any water.)


EDIT: Found this - it's a good example of subjective analysis held up as "proof" and relates to our Mexican friends above and their use of the GT200:

"Although the GT 200 is nothing more than a divining rod, Mexican defense officials praise the devices as a critical part of their efforts to combat drug traffickers. In November, 2009, at a checkpoint on the highway leading from Mexico City to Monterrey, the device pointed at a Volkswagen containing a man, a woman, and a child. Soldiers surrounded the vehicle and a search was conducted for illegal drugs. But all they found was a bottle of Tylenol — evidence, the soldier operating the device said, of how sensitive the GT 200 was."

Should have gone to the local dry cleaners… their coat hangers are given away…

I hope Joan Crawford never went water divining.

As a child I saw water diviners or dowsers a few times, a diviner was not uncommon in country Australia and were sometimes employed by farmers looking for artesian water supplies. Although I've only ever seen it using a forked branch or twig and not a rod.

This link has some history of dowsing form Geoffrey Manning's A Colonial Experience

http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/manning/sa/misc/water.htm

I’d rather hoped you may make a contribution here as I’d have expected there must be a lot of business for anyone that can claim to find water there… were those guys successful.

Yes and no Norman. Like everywhere, there are those who claim it works and others who say it is rubbish so opinion is inconclusive.

Found this site of a diviner, though I note his costs are only available on application. It would have been interesting to see how much a diviner charges these days. http://www.waterdivining.com.au/

And the skeptics site, with further links at the bottom of the page.
http://www.skeptics.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/resources/pamphlets/dowsing_water_divining.pdf

I like the sceptics site ID… and Nordmanns comments too. Let’s face it, how can it work, there’s nowhere to plug it in, or stick a battery in it, a coat hanger that is… I know full well its wide open to ridicule, Nordmann was fortunate to participate in an experiment so he speaks from experience, but so do I, for when those rods moved in my hands… I threw them on the floor in total disbelief, and I still don’t believe it. However… whenever I do give it another go… try as I might to hold them level straight and tight… the damned things still move. And that was years before I ever went on the loopy juice. I mentioned it to a young man at work (a stalwart Mormon), and he covered his ears proclaiming it to be the work of the devil… and would I please don’t talk about it anymore… as ID points out, there are those that say it is rubbish so opinion is inconclusive. Me… well I can’t get over the feel of those things twisting in my hands.