Posted on by terraviva

Man copy EPISODE 269 WATER DIVINING — FINDING UNDERGROUND WATER WITH A FORKED STICK (BELIEVE IT?)





EPISODE 269   WATER DIVINING — CAN YOU FIND UNDERGROUND WATER WITH A FORKED STICK?  (BELIEVE IT?)

alan  skeoch
March 2021



Winter will end.  Spring will come.  And the water witching rods will begin their
mysterious behaviour once again.  Witching rods only work in the hands of TRUE BELIVERS.

Take a look at picture below.  There are two creatures  looking for underground water. 

1) The man
in the red  shirt is Bradley Schneller who believes that forked stick in his hand will forcefully turn
down pointing to an underground water source where we can  dig a  new well.   Believe it?
Lots of people do believe in water witching.

2) The second creature was our dog “Tikha” whose full name is Oronhyatekha named after 
the famous Mohawk doctor of that name.  Name means Burning Cloud.   Look at
our old dog Tikha closely.   She is using her nose in the search for water.  

Where would you put your faith?  The forked stick or the dog’s nose.?



“Alan, come over here.  My forked stick says there is  a strong underground
stream right here.  Get the well driller and his truck right now.  We have found 
your new well.”  said true believer Bradley Clarence Schneller, agronomist and reader of 
crystal balls.


“Alan, something is happening … powerful source of water right here…!”
We had the driller do his work on this sport…hit water at 40 feet.



“There is something right here”, said Marjorie


(Note the dog Tikha is laughing at marjorie and going the other way.)


“Why are the rods pointing to the sky?”
“Looks like rain…as good a reason as any.”



Sandra  Schneller is  also a believer…unless she is faking her belief in water divining just to please her husband.





After six or seven diviners worked over this field  looking for water,  we called a well driller to get us  a new well.  The old well had been

hand dug and was only 20 feet deep with various creatures living in the water.  One day I slid the wooden lid free and look down and there
was a big snake looking up at me from the water below.  I thought the poor thing had fallen in the well and rescued it by lowering a pail on
a rope then told the snake…”Get in the pail before you drown”.  The snake did so.  We pulled  up the pail and the snake slithered  away
to our farm house field stone foundation which must have been its home.   The old well had other problems as well.  In summer months
the water was full of hundreds of little bugs.  Grandmother Freeman advised we “close our eyes and drink the water” which we did
sparingly.  Grandma and grandpa lived into their 90’s so the water could not have been that bad.

All the same we got a new well.   

“Where do you want me to dig?”
“Right here where most of the water diviners say there is water.”
“Good…I’ll bring in the truck and drill.”
“What do you think of this spot!” , I asked him.
“Seems  good to me.” he responded
“Why?”  I persisted.
“No overhanging branches.” he looked up…not down.

“There…water…strong stream”  he announced  after drilling 40 feet down.
“Great.”
“I could go deeper…maybe hit big aquifer at 100 feet.”
:No…that’s fine…we have water.”

In retrospect we should have kept drilling.  The 40 foot deep well is  loaded
with iron…hard water…other dissolved stuff.  Marjorie insists we buy bottled water
from the Acton hardware store.  Big bottles …hard to lift on the dispenser.
I have no idea where that water comes from.

A very wise man told me “Alan, you can dig pretty well anywhere in Southern Ontario
and hit water.  Pick  a  spot blind if you will.  But the advice of the well driller should be
kept in mind.  “What advice?”

“Do not drill where there are overhanging branches.  The branches and the drill tower are enemies.



We are using a forked stick as a diving rod.  There are other instruments such as two heavy gauge wires with ‘L’ shape held loosely
in hands,  one diviner that Bob Root and I met even used a can of insecticide hanging on a string.

ALAN skeoch
March 2021






POST SCRIPT FROM INTERNET

Does divining actually work?

Scottish Water © 2004,
a hydrogeologist having a go
at divining

Divining is the method by which some people claim to be able to locate water by walking over an area until they observe a response with an apparatus such as a forked stick, bent rods or a pendulum, usually held in front of them. It is difficult to objectively determine whether divining actually works.

There is at present no scientific explanation as to why it should work and when it has been tested impartially it has been no more successful than would be expected by chance (M. Price 1985. Introducing Groundwater, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.). A water diviner can walk over an aquifer such as the Chalk and predict that water will be found at a certain location; a hydrogeologist knows that a well drilled almost anywhere on the Chalk will encounter some water. The expense is not in finding the water but constructing a borehole to allow it to be pumped out.

However it is not possible to completely discard the subject of water divining. Some people seem to be able to locate buried pipes with the aid of rods or twigs. One theory for this is that the muscles in the body react to some electromagnetic effect caused by the presence of the metal or the water flowing through the pipe; the rods then amplify this effect so that the searcher becomes aware of them. Another theory is that some diviners know from their experience and local knowledge where groundwater is likely to be located and subconsciously cause the reaction.

Whether or not divining actually works is a matter of debate. Even if the electromagnetic theory works for pipes, there is no reason why it should detect the slow, diffuse movement of groundwater. 


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *