Witching For Water
(Page 3 of 3)
November/December 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
On one eighteen acre plot near Durham, N.C., where water is hard to find, Goldston was called in after another driller had given up on the job. J. D. walked the entire eighteen acres and found only one vein of water across the whole tract. He drilled just fifty feet from where the other driller had sunk dry well—and hit water at seventy feet.
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Goldston says he'd always heard of finding wells with V limb, but never paid any attention to the stories until he got ready to build his own house. That was before he was in the well drilling business, and his wife's Grandaddy insisted witching their well. They drilled where he said, and hit water at ninety-six feet, even though the land is on top of a hill. People just down the slope failed to get water at two hundred and fifty feet. That was when Goldston decided there must be something to the whole thing.
J. D. says he can't remember ever drilling with the switch and not getting water, and he likes to use it whenever he can.
Of course, on lots with septic tanks and drain fields, he has to compromise sometimes and place the well for convenience.
He likes a wild cherry switch because it's easy to find and doesn't have knots like a peach limb. He holds it palms down, and it turns completely around in his hands. It points down over the water, and comes back up when he passes the vein.
Mr. Goldston figures he's in a definite minority among well drillers; that at least 80% think the whole thing is a lot of baloney. But he can still locate water where some of them fail.
You find a lot of believers and a lot of non-believers and quite a few people still on the fence where the subject of dowsing is concerned. Mrs. D. P. Jenks, of the Falls of Neuse community says, "I don't even try to understand why it works, but I believe in it just the same. It seems to me the Lord must have given somebody on earth the ability to do everything that needs to be done." A gentleman at the North Carolina Department of Water Resources had an entirely different view. He said, "It's just a lot of hogwash." Mr. Obie O'Neal, of Wake Forest, N.C., doesn't know what to think. He says it worked for him once, but it never would again.
Fact or folklore? Who knows? But a lot of people have good wells that were found with the switch, and a lot of people have felt that twig turn in their hand. I have, and there's no need to argue with me.
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