water witching, or dowsing, or????

[homesteadmama]

I have been rereading my homesteading books and came across some directions to " dowse for water ". I had always heard it referred to as water witching, but whatever.... I tried it with a couple of old wire coat hangers bent in the shape specified, and it actually worked!! Has anyone else ever tried this and had it work for them?? If so, did you use it to find a water supply??

[mandyh]

I've done it with coat hangers and a Y shaped branch. It has always worked to find old water pipe lines and underground springs. We even had other people do it that had no idea where the water lines where, and it worked. It was a lot of fun. Does anybody know why it works.

[Spinner]

Yep, it works, in fact you can dowse for other things besides water. You can use many different types of things to dowse with, some people use metal hangers cause they're usually handy. Some use forked willow branches. I prefer to use copper rods.

[ponyboy123]

We had 3 locals come up and witch our property, we found some water but not quite what we were looking for. Ended up drilling 3 wells; 620 feet, 500 feet, and 420 feet and still combined only produce 3.5 gallons a minute. I think it works well for a home well but for large scale there is no garantees.

[Helena]

Found our lost septic tank many years ago when an old timer came up with a coat hanger and pointed right to it after many days of looking for it !!

[Tabitha]

I used a peach branch and it worked, but metal does not work for me.

[Maura]

We had water witched. It has to do with the electrical balance of the person doing the witching.

[Jennifer L.]

I can find pipes and lines underground. I doubted it would work but a contractor found my water pipes that way using pieces of copper wire from a piece of Romex wire. What amazed me, after I tried it, was to find out that the water line which I KNEW to be in one place, was actually 20-30' away. Sure surprised me! But for whatever reason, it works!

Jennifer

[tiogacounty]

A few years back our well driller doused our new property. He found a place where two veins crossed, and reached a few conclusions based on several decades of experience. He said the well was going to be in the 500' range, which is reasonable, my neighbors was 785', ours was 503'. He said that we would hit a lot of water. We hit an underground cavern that has at least 75 gpm. He said that the one vein was shared with another neighbor, who will probably get his well stirred up a bit. The neighbor had several days of tubulent water, until his well settled. Pretty impressive for an old man holding a tree branch in his hands? I love to hear from people who "don't believe in that stuff" LOL!!

[FarmboyBill]

I use 1/4in brazing rods to witch with. Ive only seen one person who couldnt do it, and that was my FIL. As to 2 veins running in together, ive heard that before. My brother witched a place to where he said 2 veins ran together. Turned out, there was 2 veins, but they were at 2 different depths and didnt connect. The first one was a weak vein of good water. The second was salty as could be, and ruined ther upper. If you want to tesat yourself to see if you have the gift, hold the whatever your using. amd walk crossways under electric wires. Thatll tell you if u have it or not

[culpeper]

I can do it, but my mother was much better at it. She just used any wire available - I've even seen her do it with welding rods! She never missed, and was often asked to go out to properties to find water sources.

On much the same lines as water-dowsing, my mother was able to find anybody's home from a map. She'd hold a needle on a thread over a page, and the needle would stop moving over the street where a person lived. She could do this for complete strangers. All she needed was the name of a town, and she'd just hold the needle over map pages until the person's home was found. I daresay she could have found the person without the town's name, but that would have been somewhat time-consuming and tedious. On larger maps, she could find which part of the street, even on which side of the street.

HER mother went one step further. As the wife of a man whose job took the family to a new town every year or so, it was very convenient never to get lost! They always travelled by train, and my grandmother would just get off the train and begin walking to their new home, never having seen a map of the place. On the way, she'd say things like 'the doctor lives in that street down there', or 'the school is over there on the right, 2 streets away' or whatever.

I wish I'd inherited that particular skill. My son gets worried that I'll not be able to find my way around my own home! As a navigator, I'm a total dead loss.

[dazza]

We believe!!
My husband is better than me at it. He uses brazing rods. He got shown how to by the gasfitting fella who has some big fancy machine to scan the ground and find pipes etc but uses 2 pieces of wire instead and has excellet results, better than with the machine!! He did say he finds a lot of junk though, little things that waste time.


Michaela

[Dubai Vol]

I've read a number of accounts, including some that say practically everybody can do it, and I don't disbelieve them, but at the same time I have no faith that I could make it work. I suppose I'll give it a try one of these days but I think it's probably a lost cause. I'm just too empirical. Anybody in southeast Tennessee wanna witch for a well in October?

[homesteadmama]

Dubai Vol---I think that was my biggest hang up in not trying to do this before now---I thought you had to have some " gift ' for lack of a better term to make it work---and maybe you do--but I do know that if I am just flippant about making the coat hangers work, nothing happens, but if I concentrate on what I am doing and keep in my mind what I am trying to look for, it does work!! You haven't got anything to lose by giving it a shot! Good luck---Lynn

[foxtrapper]

It's worked for me to. And I came into it skeptical and with a chip on my shoulder. I just knew it couldn't work. It was astonishing to me to watch those wires cross.

I thought I had proof that it wasn't working when it traced the water line from my house out to a tree, then back across another field with a dog leg. Surprise surprise, come to find out that's exactly how the line ran. Really did learn this for sure when the line was dug up for work.

[Argent Farms]

If any of you really know that you can witch water, you have a million dollars waiting for you from James Randi.

Go to this webpage http://www.randi.org/research/index.html and get the application. He will get your input in developing a test for your abilities and if you can do it he will give you one million dollars. No fooling.

I should warn you though, "water witches" have tried in the past and they always fail