I was supposing that these were wells that were commissioned to be dug anyway and for which it didn’t much matter the exact location. i.e. the exact situation where a dowser who could locate surface water would be useful. The only difference would be that the well company when it got a call would give a call to an independent source who would either send up a dowser and non-dowser beforehand to place the exact well site. As to the question of where do we stop, you would stop whenever the drillers would normally decide to stop and then record how deep they went before they struck water or before they gave up. Once the data is collected, it’s a straight forward matter for a statistician to determine whether dowsing helps and by about how much. Basically from the well diggers point of view there is just a slight delay as to when to began work while they wait for someone to choose the site, and then its business as usual except they collect data on how far they had to go. The key is that the well digger have no idea whether he is digging in a dowsing selected zone or not.
Admittedly I know nothing about digging wells so there may be other reasons this would be unfeasible.
This would not provide a yes/no, white/black answer. There are too many uncontrolled variables. How do we know if there is water anywhere before we drill? Geologists are pretty good at guessing, but compare a good guess to putting ten water jugs in a row with only one having water, which can more easily provide us with an objective answer. Either the correct one was chosen or it wasn’t; there’s no gray area. With a well, the dowser can always claim it was just a foot to the left, or a foot deeper, and no one can test it without laying out huge sums.
Subsurface strata can vary tremendously, and is only partly mapped (you could only map it completely if you had some way of detecting every inch, left, right, and down, and knowing what soil, rock and water existed at coords X,Y and Z. Perhaps one day we will invent a machine to do that.)
I can give two examples; one from personal experience, the other, from the Henry Gross books. First, when my well was drilled, we hit water in sand around 30 feet, but the state health requirements don’t allow us to use it. Every well must be lined with an impervious pipe (casing) down to 170 ft because the most common source of contamination is from the surface. But we hit bedrock around 100 ft and there was no water at all until ~300 ft. What if we had stopped drilling at 290, and said, “it’s a dry hole!”? But at 330 ft, we have broken thru the dry rock and have all the water we need.
The other example is a tale from Kenneth Roberts. Henry Gross had dowsed a likely spot, and said there would be two veins coming together at slightly different depths at this location, and if you drilled there, you would benefit from two sources instead of one. They drilled and shining a light down the hole, saw two streams of water spurting out and crossing.
What was probably happening was they were in fractured rock, and the “streams” were water flowing thru the cracks, but the only way that could be tested would be to drill a dozen wells nearby and see if a similar situation could be found where the dowser didn’t claim it would. Awfully expensive, and not very productive. I’d stick to jugs, thank you.
Guys, the topic is grave dowsing, not water dowsing.
Exactly. I realize water dowsing is a useful proxy, but in the interest of trying to eliminate any further hijacks, this thread is about grave dowsing only. You’re more than welcome to start a separate discussion of water dowsing if you’re interested.
Can you dowse for sunken ships? That’d be a watery grave.
What difference if it’s water dowsing, grave dowsing or dead unicorn dowsing, it’s all bullshit.
That is to say, it’s the DOWSING that’s ridiculous not what one dowses.
99% of everything is bullshit, but the topic of this bullshit is “grave dowsing.”
I understand that such a machine already exists. They shoot sound waves at the ground, and listen to the echoes, and can tell a great deal about what’s under the surface from the sound that comes back. I’m not sure if they can tell “every inch”, but they can make a pretty accurate 3 Dimensional map of what’s there.
I guess we need a geologist to tell us more, but I’ve seen some of those maps and they look like they need a lot of interpretation. I don’t think they are at the stage where you can say at 4.2 feet down, X & Y, you have a lost Lincoln head penny facing left.
In other words, we would be making a grave error to discuss finding anything else?
It all comes back to the old ‘extraordinary claims need extraordinary proofs’ thingy. It’s not up to the skeptic to prove that dowsing for graves (or anything else really) actually works…it’s up to the advocates to provide some sort of proof that it does. Should be pretty easy to test if it’s true. Dig a bunch of holes in the ground. In some of the holes put bodies in…in others put nothing in. Test. If the dowser is able to consistently identify which holes have more bodies in them than are empty at a higher rate than mere chance then there you go…proof.
Otherwise, basically dowsing for graves works just as well as dowsing for oil, or water or buried treasure…which is to say, there is no evidence that it works at all.
-XT
The Quadro-Tracker (or something like it) was touted as being able to find multiple substances – minerals, drugs, explosives, according to which “personality card” was inserted in the handle.
One way the personality card was created was to put a tiny sample of the substance to be dowsed for in the handle. Another method – hang on to your credulity, now – was to xerox a picture of, say, Marijuana, then put the copy in the device.
Which makes me wonder. What would be the substance used as “bait” to dowse for a grave? :eek:
P.T. Barnum must be spinning…
Well, if you had a thumb drive with Dawn of the Dead on it…
-XT
Pretty much right. Geophysical methods like this tell you when the velocity of the waves (electrical, sound, and radio waves are probably the most common) changes. So instead of a detailed map of the subsurface, you get a cross section showing a velocity field. Lots of things can cause velocity changes, though - changes in soil type or density, water content, temperature, etc. With enough image processing, you end up with something like this, but it’s still tough to translate that into what you’d actually find if you dug a trench along that section.
Horribly, HORRIBLY wrong!
Yeah, but it’s kind of like saying, ‘hey, this thread isn’t about whether or not Bigfoot can juggle, it’s about whether or not Bigfoot can ride a unicycle.’
Okay, okay, I’ll let it go.
Heck, belief in dowsing for water or other deep-buried commodities can persist because (paradoxically] they’re hard to verify, i.e. a dowser is confident that water/gold/whatever is 55 feet down but nobody expects the dowser himself to start digging to prove or disprove this claim (and overall, claims that are difficult or impossible to very can do quite well in the marketplace of unsupported ideas). But since serial killers rarely bury their victims more than a few feet down, if at all, I fail to see why a grave dowser can’t pick up a shovel and verify his claim. I don’t get why he wouldn’t be eager to demonstrate the validity of his beliefs, if those beliefs are sincere.
If anything, I’d expect grave dowsers to be taking quite a risk in making such an easily provable or disprovable claim.
Dowsing is a 5,000 year old art…and is referenced in the Bible. any forked green limb will function as a dowsing or divine rod, except the dogwood branch. Eighty percent of people have the ability to dowse, but can loose this ability. If lost, the ability can be regained by placing your hand on the Bible. To effectively grave dowse, one must enter a non ordinary state of reality…this is what Joe Chastain means when he says, “you must connect with the rods”…
By Jeff Warren
Pickens Co., GA, Progress News (archives)
Grave Dowsing:
Trying is believing. I stepped slowly across a burying ground, carrying two brass dowsing rods ahead of me. Held level and a little higher than my waist, the 21-inch rods pointed straight ahead. An additional five and a half inches of brass turned down at 90 degrees through my fingers.
. . .
Wolfscratch.
[ *The rest of this text, copied from another site, may be found at:
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/serial-killer-on-the-loose-in-gaffney-sc/ * ]
http://cheryldunlap.bigboardlive.com/f3-wolfscratch-s-wisdom
Sometimes Life imitates Art.
I have been backtracking & researching a Serial Killer named Gary Michael (‘MACK’; the Knife)Hilton: ‘The Forest Killer’, since 01/06/08 when he held an innocent victim within 200 yards of my home in an abandoned farmhouse; Meredith Hope Emerson(Blood Mountain Hiker: a kindred Spirit and Fighter: the reason for his capture. Meredith, brought his 4+ decade, reign of terror to an abrupt end…She gave her life, so that other innocent victims may live…
At sunrise on 01/06/2008, I began an independent search for her remains, focusing on abandoned wells and houses.The information that I have gathered has come from conventional and nonconventional investigative methods.
When he was arrested, he was thought to be a petty drifter. After backtracking him only a few days, it was obvious to me that he was very intelligent, cagey, calculating, evil, demonic, cannibal, ritual; Serial Killer, with no victim profile and had been preying on his victims for decades. My analogy of him was that of a mountain lion. He would hunt his prey, capture them, return them to his primary den, then devour them.
GMH’s victims range in age between 11 year old to 84 year old, no victim profile, only a preference; females…
GMH’s IQ is within the top 10% of the world… He could have been Ted Bundy’s Professor, IMO…
A LE officer close to the case, working a cold case of a missing GA school teacher was asked by me, why did he have no victim profile"? The Agents response: ’ Food’…different cuts of meat…
In 1994, Hilton, helped to creatively write a movie that went straight to video: “Deadly Run”: ‘Hunting Humans’. He helped to name, creatively write the script, handpicked the cast & crew, shoot locations, and tutored the lead actor in the ‘Art’ of Serial Killing. The movie’s plot; luring young girls to a cabin in the North GA Mtns, holding them captive, releasing them into the forest, then hunting them as prey…
The movie’s producer; Samuel Rael/Hilton’s Defense Attorney in an Arson case said, “I knew that he was Sociopath, but didn’t know that he was violent.”
A Serial Killer with a script…
GMH was a master at emulation, he was a copycat of many with an added tyrst of his own creativity.
In the attic of the abandoned Densmore farmhouse, he had a frigid weather room which was complete with a wood burning stove, which he used newspaper and cardboard as fuel. I found an article from a 1989 Gainesville, GA Times: Night Stalker says, “Lucifer will avenge me…I don’t expect you to understand me, I am beyond good and evil.”
GMH, is the ‘Devil’s Deciple’…
In many of GMH’s interviews, he states that he reads constantly. I talked to a Thrift Store Volunteer, that eyewitnessed him at the Jasper, GA 30143-Community Thrift Store, checked out their book supply, and here I am over 350 books later…
Wolfscratch
Folks, according to a GBI agent’s comment on the Debra Moody (GA) Missing-site, the GBI knew since 1980 thgat an abnormal number of women were being abducted or missing. This comment has since been removed.
GMH is known as a Stealth Predator…“He was a Hunter, a Professional, a Soldier on a Perpetual Mission(special forces trained). He didn’ hunt deer, turkeys, squirrels or birds… He hunted Humans”…'Georgia Cappleman Prosecutor: Leon County, FL Closing Statement in GMH’s Death Penalty Trial…
WS
What is the origin of the article you cut-and-pasted in post #156? Can you tell us which law enforcement agencies have used your help?
Bigfoot on a bike LOL
‘Seeing is believing, Jack Beaty’…
Wolfscratch