Anyone Tried Locating A Cache With Divining Rods?

[+GPSr]

I bought some divining rods (L-rods,water witching rods,etc) many years ago and am thinking about using them to find a cache. Anyone else ever tried them or pendulum dowsing to locate a cache?

[+Ed & Julie]

or ESP, or transmissions from ailens, or hints from bigfoot???

 

Sorry...couldnt resist

 

Acually, I have used divining rods one time at "The Oregon Vortex" which was really cool. It really worked!!! Not pratical for geocacing though.

 

Happy caching!!

Ed

[+EraSeek]

I did see a group of people once learning to use divinig rods while I was caching nearby. Interesting.

[+ChileHead]

Usually I wear my foil hat.

[+Team Cotati]

I have never tried that but it sounds really interesting and exciting. Let me know how it works out....will you?

[nobby.nobbs]

can't be any worse than using the gps sometimes!!! now where can i get a pocket witch doctor?

[+tanisdad]

Since Divining rods appear to use distubances in the ground to work( ie lower density soil locations or maybe magnetic interference) , it is hard to imagine that they would be able to "divine " the location of a cache.

 

Now I shall put my aluminum foil hat away.

[+IV_Warrior]

Well, I've talked with a guy who swears he's able to find nails embedding deep in logs (no visible marks in the bark) with them, so maybe if you hunting metallic caches it'd work. I've thought about using a metal detector in winter to find ammo cans under the snow.

[+caderoux]

I would have been willing to try anything today. The GPS was only putting me to within about 50 feet. I went 10 out of 11 in a nearly 4-hour hunt, and every one was harder than it needed to be. Never felt like I was in the zone at all.

 

Dowsing rods definitely can work - the cable guy used them before digging a trench at my dad's house - wonder if they would work for caching.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

I bought some divining rods (L-rods,water witching rods,etc) many years ago and am thinking about using them to find a cache. Anyone else ever tried them or pendulum dowsing to locate a cache?

Funny you should ask.....

[+TresOkies]

I bought some divining rods (L-rods,water witching rods,etc)

You actually paid for divining rods? And here I've been making them out of coat hangers and baling wire all these years. You shouldn't need them for geocaching since caches should be above ground.

 

As for the tin-foil comments, I'm an engineer and a skeptic on a lot of stuff. I've seen people I know and trust use them to find sewer mains and buried cable. I wouldn't rely on it if I had alternatives, but it has worked for me in a pinch. Maybe it's quackery, but I found my sewer pipes with a set and got it right the first time.

[+dogbreathcanada]

I have a magic djinni that helps me find caches.

[+Crazy Aaron]

I'll just offer this link and say no more:

Wikipedia - Dowsing

[+Sue Gremlin]

If anyone does this, I wanna go caching with you. Totally. I wanna watch.

[+Ltljon]

A divining rod only works when it's very close to the object. If you're that close Ray Charles could find it.

[+joe gremlin]

I messed around with divining rods once. When I was done, every spoon in the house was bent.

[+Sue Gremlin]

That was YOU?!

[ju66l3r]

A divining rod doesn't work.

 

There, I fixed that sentence for you.

 

Here's a good link for anyone who thinks dowsing works...because if you can prove it works, you can have $1 million:

 

http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/

[+Prime Suspect]

A divining rod doesn't work.

 

There, I fixed that sentence for you.

 

Here's a good link for anyone who thinks dowsing works...because if you can prove it works, you can have $1 million:

 

http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/

I was just about to post info on the Randi challenge, when I saw your post.

 

There are people who are (slightly) better than average at locating water, but it's because they've learned (often without knowing it) to read the geological signs that indicate that their might be water present. It has nothing to do with bent rods or forked branches. When put to a controlled test over even terrain, they've never done better than pure chance.

[+tabulator32]

This is reminiscent of a forum thread I saw where it was claimed that folks with a higher concentration of iron in their blood system had a better sense of direction, especially when it was concentrated in the person's nose, as if they had slept with a magnet close to their nose so it would gather there as the blood flowed past.

 

Something along the lines of an internal, natural compass needle, I suppose.

 

 

Although, someone may have been able to use water divining rods to find my first cache placement today.

 

It was noted as waterlogged!

 

Edited August 7, 2005 by tabulator32

[+nctreker]

I would think they would work best for hydro caches.

[+Ltljon]

A divining rod doesn't work.

 

There, I fixed that sentence for you.

 

The same could be said for religion, depends on the believer.

[ju66l3r]

The same could be said for religion, depends on the believer.

No. There is a very distinct difference between a belief system and a claim of the paranormal. The latter attempts to distort science in a way that gives them their desired result. This is why Randi's Challenge can exist (by requiring a controlled scientific experiment to prove the validity of the paranormal claim). The former has nothing to do with science as beliefs can not be proven under controlled conditions.

 

Pointer to this very issue in Randi's FAQ: http://www.randi.org/research/faq.html#2.5

[+tabulator32]

I doubt they would award a cool million to someone for finding a cache with divining rods. The coordinates of the cache ARE posted on the internet.

 

 

[Clan Riffster]

There is a very distinct difference between a belief system and a claim of the paranormal.

That would seem to be a matter of debate. Many factors of the "paranormal" claim to be belief oriented, requiring positive energies to work properly. If I believe in a system that supports so called paranormal activity, how would that differ substantially from modern, acceptable religious dogma?

 

Christ reportedly changed water into wine. Was this divine intervention, or molecular reorientation? The former would suggest a belief system, claiming to be a "miracle from God" whereas the latter would see to label this as paranormal, in that it is "not scientifically explainable; supernatural", as defined by Webster's and quoted by the JREF FAQ page. Yet they refer to the same act. Would the story of Christ rising from the dead be considered a religious action, or just another paranormal ghost story?

 

For some folks, the paranormal is their belief system, effectively elliminating any difference.

 

Just $0.02 from the cheap seats.

[+QDman]

My folks bought some property about 30 years ago and had to have a well put in. They hired a guy to dig the well. He came out, got his divining rod, walked around for a while, and said, "I'm going to drop the well here." He did, and he struck water. Did he get lucky, or do those things work? Beats me. All I know is my folks had all the water pressure they needed.

[PyroDave]

Well when my arents built there house my dad hired one to find out where to drill the well. Little background on my dad hes a enginer very very cut and dry type of guy wont even go to a cyroprator cause he thinks there quacks. Its been 15 years or sence the built the house and the well has never gave them a prob even during the dryest of summers. So I vote ya they work.

[ju66l3r]

Christ reportedly changed water into wine. Was this divine intervention, or molecular reorientation? The former would suggest a belief system, claiming to be a "miracle from God" whereas the latter would see to label this as paranormal, in that it is "not scientifically explainable; supernatural", as defined by Webster's and quoted by the JREF FAQ page. Yet they refer to the same act. Would the story of Christ rising from the dead be considered a religious action, or just another paranormal ghost story?

If you attempt to construe your "occurence" in terms of a scientific principle (molecular rearrangment, divining rods, mental bending of spoons, healing water), then it can be tested in a controlled scientific experiment. Under those conditions, if you can get your miracle to work, then you get Randi's money.

 

If you attempt to construe your "occurence" in terms of God (miraculous wine from water, resurrection of God's son, etc), then it can't be tested in a controlled experiment. Science has no bearing on "God's will be done".

 

It may be a line you would like to blur but it's a line nonetheless and an important one in defining whether you can answer a scientific question about the validity of the "occurence" by a controlled experiment.

 

Dowsing is a claim of pseudo-naturality. It's a hoax and wouldn't bestow some special ability for geocaching.

[+CYBret]

I used to sit and drink coffee with Bob every morning. He was a rough old farm hand with eyes as bloodshot as...well...a very bloodshot thing...that you could see through.

 

Bob would tell me how he was a witch and that he could use his witchin' stick to find anything he wanted. All he had to do was set in his mind what he wanted to find and he could use the stick to find it. He even told me that his wife couldn't hid Christmas presents from him because he'd set the stick for Christmas presents and find her hiding spots around the house. Of course, I think it helped that Bob lived in a two-room shack and my guess is there are only so many places you can hide a bottle of Wild Turkey.

 

Bob also claimed that if you put a marble (a real marble marble, not a glass marble) in a glass of muddy pond water he could hold his witchin' stick over it and make it rise to the top. He said that if the water was really muddy and you held the stick too tight it'd peel the bark off in his hands. Unfortunately he always forgot to bring his stick into the coffee shop to show me how it worked.

 

Too bad Bob never set his stick for cancer. It turned out that's what the nasty open sore on the side of his head was. It finally got him.

 

I like caching.

 

Bret

[+AtoZ]

I bought some divining rods (L-rods,water witching rods,etc) many years ago and am thinking about using them to find a cache. Anyone else ever tried them or pendulum dowsing to locate a cache?

I got a bridge I want to sell.

cheers

[bug and snake]

Hmmmmm.....

 

Well, brings back a memory from the way-back.....

 

When I was a lot younger I was working in a local architects office. One of the draughtsmen brought in a set of 'L' rods. They were like coathanger wire and they had brass handle pieces that they could rotate freely in. We were trying them out and who should walk in but the boss. Rather than make comments he showed a lot of interest. So, after we had all had a go he tried them too. The result was that three of us, out of seven, got a 'hit' on a certain location. We moved to the next office and the same three got a hit there too. The 'hits' didn't actually seem to relate to anything however so we soon forgot the whole thing. It must have been about six months after that when the boss came in and told us that he was looking to build an extension to the office and when he was checking out the plans of the building (a converted OLD house) he had found that there was an abandoned drainage pipe exactly on the line where we had found the 'hits' with the dowsing rods.

 

Still, you can think what you want to I suppose but for cache hunting, I dunno!

[+StarBrand]

...and here I am thinking that the "wizard staff" I bought from El Diablo was going to be enough to locate 'em.....