In Vermont: Is Dowsing Going to the Dogs?

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The gathering is decidedly middle-aged and Middle American. Yet the society's rolls list people of all ages and more than a smattering of doctors and engineers. The parapsychology class from Somerset School in Washington, D.C., included Teen-Ager Laura Michael. "I don't know what to make of it," she gushed. "It's all so mind blowing."

Most dowsers seem to like nothing better than to regale skeptics with their accomplishments. Clarence Hollett of Willow Shade, Ky., styles himself as "the Mr. Doodlebug." In the dowser lexicon, doodlebugs are a special breed — diviners for oil. Hollett, a rotund, barrel-chested man, says he has found wells that produce 1 ,000 bbl. a day and, if only he hadn't been swindled by so-called friends, he might be a millionaire. He also dabbles in healing and dowses for gold. "Don't believe me?" he asks, and promptly borrows a gold ring from a cynical listener. Hollett's divining rod is a single leaf of spring steel about 2 ft. long and weighted at the far end. Holding the rod in one hand and the ring in the other he smugly watches as the steel bends toward the ring. "Guess you got gold there," he says, laughingly brushing off the suggestion that the rod's natural tension caused the bending.

From British-born Robert Massy, a dropout physicist now at California's non conformist University of the Trees, the skeptic is flattered to learn that he has a yellow aura — "a sign of intellect." A friend is told that she has a pinkish glow, which means that she loves people. Archetypal Dowser MacLean, who still works as a chemical engineer in Portland, claims he can divine the arrival of oil tankers even when they are still far beyond the horizon. He adds: "Doesn't make any difference how far the object is if you have the power." California Dowser Jack Livingston professes to have spotted water as far as a continent away. Why don't the dowsers use their gift for predicting the outcome of a race or the future price of a stock? "Not ethical," snaps MacLean. "You should only put dowsing to work for the good of the people. Greed interferes with your skill."

Still pronouncing himself unconvinced, the skeptic is invited by Spokesman Kaufmann, an irrepressible, retired Madison Avenue public relations man, to try his own luck with the dowsing rods in the backyard of Injunjoe's cabin colony. It is already late in the evening. A full moon is casting an eerie light on the scene. The skeptic moves forward, tightly gripping the twin rods and saying, "I am seeking water. I am seeking water." Suddenly the rods swing apart. Have the rods found water? Or did they simply slip apart from the motion of the skeptic's stride? Kaufmann has no doubts. "You've got the gift,: he gloats. "You've got divining power." What did he find? asks the incredulous apostle of science, admittedly a little shaken but hardly converted. "Oh, probably a cesspool," Kaufmann laughs. "That's about all you'd have around here."