‘An investigation into dowsing’, 2011

I had written a long essay about dowsing, using many quotes and scientific data from research papers on the validity of dowsing. However, I feel that you can take my word for it that option is divided. My dad believes that dowsing for water works, but dowsing for spirits does not (he does not believe that spirits exist).
His friend Richard dowses to locate pipes containing petrol before digging up the forecourts. Einstein also believed it works for multiple uses.

Many others do not. They point to the fact that no one has taken up James Randis' million-dollar challenge; a million dollar prize given to anyone who can prove any paranormal activity (whether dowsing sits within the paranormal is maybe debatable, certainly some subsets of the practice are).
Here is a clip of Randis testing a dowser on American TV.

And here he is lecturing a man who wants to apply for the challenge. I don’t know about you but he does seem like quite an easy target.

Anyway, we seem to have got ahead of ourselves, we should dissect dowsing into groupings:

(1) Field Dowsing — the "traditional" use of dowsing, which involves locating water, objects, and so forth on a given terrain. This is called "witching the area";
(2) Remote Dowsing — "witching the area" is not required in this approach. Instead, the dowser locates the target from a distance of up to several miles;
(3) Map Dowsing — the dowser locates the target using a map or sketch, often accompanied by the use of an occult pendulum. There are no distance limits here, since the dowser can supposedly locate his or her target even 10,000 miles away;
(4) Information Dowsing — the dowser obtains needed information on any subject with neither space nor time limits.

I decided to conduct my own experiment; it could be termed Field Dowsing. However, it was done in the controlled environment of my flat. I chose to use the L shaped dowsing rods, which I have observed my dad using on drizzly days in Cumbria, as opposed to the bendy thing with a white dot on the end that the man used for Randis with miserable results.

The results are conclusive: 7 times out of 10 the dowsing rods reacted in the correct manner to the water/soil stimulus.

So we can now confirm that the claims of Field Dowsing are true.

This being said, it does not necessarily follow that all claims are true. Chris Barr is a Feng shui expert and house dowser. She dowses for certain energies in your house. These energies include geopathic stress, negative Hartmann lines, negative Curry lines and interference lines. As far as I can work out she then moves your furniture about to avoid these energies. If you are interested, do follow this link to find out more.

This lady below dowses for auras with, we must conclude from her instructional video and demonstration, some fine results.

Richard Felix here dowses for spirits, which my father believes are not true.

I have tried making the dowsing rods move to a certain point and stop in a chosen direction, and it is quite easy to do. Whether it is a spirit you want to exist or a camera you had just put on a tripod, it doesn’t look like you are moving your hands much at all.
Below is an example of me doing just that.

Now we will, I am afraid, skip Remote Dowsing and Map Dowsing as they don’t make good videos, and move on to Information Dowsing.

Here, a man from the Tribe of the Light will demonstrate how to dowse for information with a pendulum.

He seems to get confused as to whether he is demonstrating or this is actually working; and I am not sure myself if that matters. His hand seems to move slightly, but I don’t know if that does either. I tried my own pendulum-based Information Dowsing test using his instructions but ran into a little difficulty.

Perhaps I am not cut out for the pendulum. I have heard that the tool you use to dowse with does not matter. L shaped rods, Y shaped stick, Pendulum, springy rod, one man it is said even used a German sausage with great results. I guess you just use whichever works for you. My cat had obviously been wanting to get involved, you can see him watching in the first video he sat on and broke the Y shaped stick I spent 2 days whittling. I have decided to use him to dowse.

So there we have it, Dowsing = Truth.