# Divining Rods



## skyline27 (Mar 7, 2008)

I've always been fascinated with divining rods. I knew people used to find well sites with them. These guys claim you can also find gold. Is this true?

Item number: 270216563675


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## starzfan0211 (Mar 7, 2008)

I don't know about gold, but my dad who was a plumber used them to find water lines all the time. He even showed me how to use them and I was shocked at how accurate it can be.


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## peter i (Mar 7, 2008)

There has never been a controlled experiment, showing any effect of divining rods.
Try to read http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/ it has a nice (sceptic) walk though of the phenomenon. 

Hundreds have been tested, but no one could do it. If you know anybody who can, there is a million right here, just come and pick it up.
http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

Regards
Peter


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## skyline27 (Mar 7, 2008)

I don't rely on science to explain everything. Results are good enough for me.


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## peter i (Mar 7, 2008)

Reproducible results are great, and then let’s try to explain it afterwards (that’s a fully approved way: Make an observation, then try to explain it).

But if you can not do it in a controlled experiment, then it’s bogus. If it really could be done, there would be an entirely new field of science and a lot of other possibilities.

If it could be done, why has no one collected the million?

You will be allowed to participate in arranging the experiment, and as long as it is “double blind”, there should be no problems.


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## ChucknC (Mar 7, 2008)

I have known several dowsers who simply dowse because they can, and won't take anything for their services. I've seen them find water, minerals and even a couple of slave era graves in Charleston, SC. Each one has said the same thing, If they do it for monetary gain, such as the testing, it simply doesn't work. It is a freely given skill or talent that they share willingly.

I have seen some of these "controled tests". Quite frankly, there was so much electrical interference from machinery, high tension wires and hand held measuring devices, that cell phones wouldn't work. Each one was rigged to fail. The brain, which generates electricity, simply couldn't overcome the interference. If a true test was done, scientists would still dismiss it because they can't explain the mechanisms at work.

Suffice it to say, some people can but most people can't dowse. It's one of those latent abilities you have or you don't. Unfortunately, I don't.

Now long range detecting(electronic dowsing) devices, I have a problem with.

Chuck


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## Anonymous (Mar 7, 2008)

I with my own eyes saw a city worker finding water lines and paint marking the locations with 2 bent metal wires. I watched him for a minute from the gas station whiling filling up he would walk across and area the wires would cross he stepped back and the wires uncrossed he did each location a couple of times then painted the spot.

I do not know about controlled but there was no one else with him and he had no reason to suspect I was watching or cared about what he was doing. 

The nesxt days they were digging the lines up were he was at.

Thats all I know about that.


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## skyline27 (Mar 7, 2008)

I'd wager, there was once a man who could do it without the sticks.


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## One Blanket (Mar 7, 2008)

Long post - be warned - age 16 (about 1960) we needed a water well - Mom fetched /grandma & a forked peachtree branch- Grandma walked & branch bent towards the ground - I'd never seen this done before - I tried & no action - Grandma stood behind me & reached around & held each of my wrists & I held the stick - we waddled maybe 25 feet across the site & I could not prevent the stick from bending. 
1987 I started a treasure dig (I had no idea of the history of prior unsucessful searches) based on stone markers I'd found - I learned Grandma had dowsed the site in the '40's & an uncle in the late 40's.
 Mom told me about 1990 that when she was a kid ( graduated HS about 1932/33 ) that at birthday parties Grandma would be in the kitchen making refreshments & the kids would hide Grandpa's $5 gold piece in the yard & cut a forked stick. When refreshments came out Grandma would put her wedding band in the end of the forked stick & find the gold coin. 
In the 1980's a friend joined the American Society of Dowsers in Vermont & went to one of their summer sessions up there to learn to dowse. The field - hands on - lessons on the town common - the old guy leading his group of 6 or 8 had them all locate an underground stream - then when they all had it located he took a piece of paper & pen - drew the stream - then blocked it 2 places & drew in a detour - the students could not find the stream where it had been, but did find it in the new location.
The AmSocDow has a quarterly publication - one guy was a young man in ?Belgium? during WW2 & afterward became a local/regional/national bureacrat - his renown was dowsing the corner markers, building foundations, fence rows, & etc all over his country since
WW2 had obliterated villages & towns & landmarks.
After Hurricane Andrew here in Miami house numbers - street signs - landmarks were obliterated - homeowners took to spraypainting the house number & street address & insurance company name on any surface so people could know where they were - to find where they wanted to go.


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## skyline27 (Mar 7, 2008)

Where did all the doubters go?


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## istari9 (Mar 7, 2008)

When I was a land owner in Calif I learned about witching for water and metals. I took a y shaped stick from a water loving tree and held it with my hands upside-down arms tight to my side’s end of the stick pointing up. I walked for a well location and counted my steps for depth when I felt the stick start to move. I have also done it with various metal rods to locate scrap piles that had been overgrown and lost over time. Worked every time. Never looked for Gold this way but was known to pan the Feather River in Calif a time or two. I always was able to find some gold. This is why I look in my basement for gold now. Go figure...


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## Harold_V (Mar 8, 2008)

I have witnessed dowsing many times in my years, and have done it with success myself by finding buried pipes. My first experience was watching employees of Mountain Fuel Supply, in Salt Lake City, looking for a known pipe, underground. I went home, bent two pieces of welding rod and looked for my water line in the front yard. Hit right on it. 

Fast forward many years. I now live in Washington State, and have a water well. The first one, which failed, was picked from convenience, where I wanted the well to be. Here in Washington, you can drill almost anywhere and hit water eventually, although there are many dry holes that exceed 400' in depth. My current well is 365 feet deep. 

Our first well ran dry after about six months. I determined we had hit a body of water and had consumed it. The well, from that day forward, would produce about 8 gallons of water daily, then run dry again. Were it not for the Pump Tec protective device, we'd have lost the pump. 

Before drilling again, I had three different individuals witch the property for a good spot to drill. I had narrowed the choice to an area of approximately 50', which was a reasonable place for the well. The first individual located what he considered a good place to drill, so I placed a small stone on the ground to designate his choice. Not enough to draw the attention of anyone, but I knew what it was, and why it was there. Stones on the ground are not an anomaly here. The other two people picked the same spot, within less than a foot. 

Believe in witching or not, there's no doubt it works-----it does for me, and it does for my wife. I have no doubt there's a reasonable explanation, something as elementary as interrupting the lines of force of gravity, if nothing else. 

I'm the world's greatest skeptic----but I do believe that witching works. I've seen far too much evidence to conclude otherwise. 

Now to find the reason it does! :wink: 

Harold


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## skyline27 (Mar 8, 2008)

No surprise it works for Harold...dude knows a few things about Earth


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## Shaul (Mar 8, 2008)

Now if I could just use it to find new sources of computer scrap  

Ah well....

Shaul


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## peter i (Mar 8, 2008)

ChucknC said:


> Each one has said the same thing, If they do it for monetary gain, such as the testing, it simply doesn't work. It is a freely given skill or talent that they share willingly.



That’s the funny part of it! (And a general thing about paranormal phenomena, by the way.)

Whenever there is any attempt to make a controlled experiment, it won’t work!
(And neither has it ever been possible to measure “negative energies” or “bad karma”)

Something as simple as “put a gold coin under one of ten inverted buckets”, make sure that the person dowsing can’t know under which it is, (and neither should the guy with the clip-board know it). It should be a piece of cake, but there is no-one able to find it with a larger probability than 10%, let alone finding it 3 or 4 times in a row.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I would love it to be real! 
People really find things with the rods that can not be denied. But unless the other possible explanations can be omitted, and they still find things, then it is not the rods that should receive the honours.
It may be a case of subconsciously knowing where things are? And unless you know it beforehand, it won’t work? That’s the very idea of a double blind test

But please, if you can do it, then bust Randi, buy beer for the money and lets all meet somewhere sunny with a good beach!


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## Anonymous (Mar 19, 2008)

> That’s the funny part of it! (And a general thing about paranormal phenomena, by the way.)
> 
> Whenever there is any attempt to make a controlled experiment, it won’t work!
> (And neither has it ever been possible to measure “negative energies” or “bad karma”)
> ...


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## skyline27 (Mar 19, 2008)

I'm wondering what other abilities we have but don't realize. I think Grampa Caveman knew a few things that we forgot.


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## peter i (Mar 20, 2008)

omnivisone said:


> Try using buckets not made of plastic. Plastic is made from oil which has a high content of hydrogen. very misleading to someone trying to find H20 by gravitational disturbances.


"Gravitational disturbance" from the lightest of all elements? Considering that there is plenty of water/moisture in the ground that should make so much “background radiation" that any sort of divining would be impossible.

But I did say "gold coin" didn’t I? 
Diviners quite often claim gold to be the easiest to find, and as it is seldom, little other gold should “anger the spirits”.
Water may be easier, as you will get wet feet in most places when digging deep enough. And water does not run in narrow channels that must be hit with pin-point accuracy. More like "large wet patches" and it is best to hit it where it is reasonably thick. 
The methods and targets of the controlled tests have normally been accepted by the participants (why should they be a part of an experiment they expected to fail?), and the researchers normally report that the subject start out with a great confidence, considering it a piece of cake to find something that easy. And they failed…

I think most of the diviners really believe that they can do it. And maybe they are very good at reading the terrain and have acquired an experience regarding good places to dig a well, where the pipes normally are or where people would roll in the grass dropping their watches.


Another fact about paranormal phenomena is, that the people experiencing and performing them normally consider success a proof, and failure not a failure, but caused by something else.

Lets say I roll a dice, wanting “6”. And do it 12 times. Statistically I should expect two sixes.

Now I try to “influence” the dice, commanding it to roll as many sixes as possible. Less than two is failure, more is success. If I ignore the failures (my karma just did not work), I will be tremendously successful!
But scientifically I’ve proven nothing. It’s is not likely that I will roll 12 sixes, but given enough tries it will happen.
The proof that I can do something first come, when I roll 1200 times, rolling 3- or 400 sixes (and then I’ll quit the experiment and move to Las Vegas!).

If you cannot deliver on demand in a blind experiment, chances are that when you deliver, it’s just a lucky strike.


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## rhwhite67 (Jul 10, 2017)

Just for fun. I know it works. Ive thrown my wedding band into tall grass in the yard and had my father who was in the house where he could not see me come out and within a minute or two walk right to it. Ive also done it myself in finding a pendant my wife lost while moving the lawn. My Grandfather could outdo the best metal detector on the market in 2006 with a piece of welding rod that had a small piece of silver taped to it for finding coins. He could tell if someone had gold fillings in their teeth as well as well as small gold flake in streams.
Ron


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## eaglewings35 (Jul 19, 2017)

I have a good friend in Nevada who looked up available mining claims...
He printed them out, doused them and found the best one and bought it. He went to the property and took out his rods and found a vein that runs the length of his claim, it is 4ft wide and is 12 ft thick. He then mapped about 6 or 7 smaller veins off of the main one.
He took out his shovel and sledge hammer and dug down in the dirt 12" and hit a vein of quartz. He broke off a piece and looked at it used a loupe and saw several pieces of gold.

Needless to say he is mining this claim and finding alot of gold, silver,copper and we think platinum. We are preparing a sample to send out for an assay.

This friend can douse a Google map and pinpoint gold locations. I can verify this to be true and accurate. Seen it !!


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## 4metals (Jul 23, 2017)

I don't know about finding gold but I have used a bent coat hangar, one in each hand, to find buried water and electrical lines. When walking across the buried line the hangars, bent into an L shape, cross as they pass over the line. Pretty amazing. 

When I was first shown how to do this, one of the bent pieces would react to the buried line and one wouldn't. I had a battery powered watch in that arm and when I removed it they both crossed when I passed over the buried line. 

I have used this technique many times since I learned it about 15 years ago, I'm convinced!


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## Long Shot (Jul 24, 2017)

A college professor of mine and my former father-in-law, both PEng's, would jump right down your throat at the mention of dowsing. Hogwash, witchcraft, BS where adjectives used to be polite! It is alternatively called witching so witchcraft I could except. Point is, it does work for certain people, I worked with a guy that could pinpoint un-mapped water mains when we were doing leak detection surveys and have seen it done accurately, he used the L coat hangers 4-Metals mentioned.

I consider myself scientific in approach to most things but sometimes a strict scientific approach isn't needed to come up with a useful and working method. This is one of those things. As 4-Metals said, something as benign as a battery powered watch is enough to interfere with the technique and thus, if lots of electronic gear is present trying to prove and / or quantify this phenomenon then it probably will never be done. This is not a religious statement but there are millions that believe in something that has not been proven or for that matter, seen, but is excepted as the truth so why is dowsing such a hard thing to except to some?

Just sayin' :mrgreen:


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## 4metals (Aug 9, 2017)

Another weird phenomenon I have seen which is pretty amazing is extending the range of a remote control (I do it with the car remote) by placing the remote pointed up at your chin and looking at the car you are trying to control. Whatever your head does to the signal, it extends the range. Now in my head this may be because there is so little in there to interfere with the signal but for whatever reason it extends the range of the remote. 

Anybody else seen this work? It's easy to try yourself, when walking towards your car but knowing you are too far away for the remote to work, put it up to your chin and try it. I haven't quantified distance but I'll bet it extends the range by 25%. 

Where's the science that makes this work?


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## Topher_osAUrus (Aug 9, 2017)

4metals said:


> Anybody else seen this work? It's easy to try yourself, when walking towards your car but knowing you are too far away for the remote to work, put it up to your chin and try it. I haven't quantified distance but I'll bet it extends the range by 25%.
> 
> Where's the science that makes this work?



Yep!
Its a pretty neat little trick I use when I can't remember what isle the car is on, and the range is just a bit weak to get it to honk.

It is one of life's great mysteries.
...until some nerd with a thesis starts doing brainscans while the subject is doing the remote trick
But until then, life's great mysteries!


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## g_axelsson (Aug 10, 2017)

The car key trick is basically putting a ground plane beneath an antenna. It effectively creates a mirror for radio waves and makes the sender look bigger and more powerful and increases the range.

Göran


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## 4metals (Aug 10, 2017)

So between my hands on experience with divining rods (or bent coat hangers if you will) and car remotes, maybe I should quit my day job and start prospecting for gold veins!


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## Topher_osAUrus (Aug 10, 2017)

4metals said:


> So between my hands on experience with divining rods (or bent coat hangers if you will) and car remotes, maybe I should quit my day job and start prospecting for gold veins!



I was more into it before Göran ruined the magic of it all!


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## g_axelsson (Aug 10, 2017)

I'm feeling sorry for you guys who don't see the magic in modern science. :wink: :mrgreen: 

Göran


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## Topher_osAUrus (Aug 10, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> I'm feeling sorry for you guys who don't see the magic in modern science. :wink: :mrgreen:
> 
> Göran



What? You mean like dissolving gold, a metal known for its inert nature and resistance to oxidation, then taking that resulting liquid and making the gold reduce back out into a state that very few people recognise?

Yah, I suppose that is pretty awesome and magical too, eh?


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## upcyclist (Aug 11, 2017)

I used to do the same thing with my key fob, but I'd press it to my temple. Using my skull as a reflector/amplifier is at least healthier than nitric acid or cyanide :lol: 

The only reason I don't still use it is because my Corolla has a super-quiet beep when armed/disarmed that I can't hear from more than 50 feet away anyway.


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