Witching - Part One

by Hattie Dyck

Witching, divining, or dowsing to find water or metal underground is an ancient custom that works, but there’s no scientific explanation of why it works.

   It’s been associated with life in rural Nova Scotia for generations. Not everyone can do this ancient art but those who can have helped many to find the right place to dig or drill a well.

Some diviners use a short, forked branch of a tree when they look for water, Others can take a coat hanger or other metal pieces, and hold it over a certain spot in the ground, only to have the metal pieces cross or drop to the ground, when you hit the spot where the water is. Others can witch for metal such as pipes beneath the surface and they will find they are below where the diviner is standing.

   Some members of The Canadian Society of Dowsers see dowsing as a tool to increase spirituality. Others see it as a “fringe science” that has a practical use for an everyday problem. All agree there is no scientific explanation.

   Shane Blinkhorn, Sandy Point, Shelburne, remembers the late Jack McKenny who was once a school supervisor for Shelburne schools, as an accurate diviner. Divining was only a hobby for him but he was really good at it.

   Shane, a sea captain, was out fishing when Mr. McKenny came and divined the place where he should drill his well. When he got home Mr. McKenny had left him a diagram that showed him three different areas where there was water underground, and he

indicated where the best place for him to drill would be. It was a real test as that was one of the driest years in Shelburne that Shane remembers for a long time.

   When the contractor came to drill the well, he followed Mr. McKenny’s instructions and drilled down nine feet where he hit a rock ledge. He left the hole for a few hours to see how successful it would be. When he returned to it later in the day there was a few feet of water in it. They then decided to blast the ledge another five feet which would give them 14 feet of depth. This was a great decision because 28 years later Shane and his wife Wendy have never had a problem with lack of water.

   Shane says this success with a simple piece of a tree branch is unbelievable but the proof is there that it works. His brother Blaine who lives at Sandy Point near Shelburne had Burke Harris, a Shelburne diviner seek out the spot to drill his well in 1991. The result was good as they drilled the well in August of 1991 which was a really dry weather year. Since then, Blaine and his wife Anne have enjoyed lots of water with the water level never going

below 10 feet.

   He recalls that Burke used two coat hangers to do the job. He simply walked around the yard and wasn’t long finding the right place for them to drill.

   Ronnie Singer, Moose Brook, doesn’t divine for water, but he can use two coat hangers to find pipes underground. This skill has stood him in good stead many times especially when he was working for a construction company in Halifax that repaired sewer lines.

   Many times when they would have had to wait for a special crew to come in to find where pipes were, he and an older man he worked with would use two coat hangers to find where the pipes were. The hardest person to convince this truly worked was his father, the late Harry Singer.

   Once when he found a pipe at his own home his father commented that “”it’s a good thing you knew where it was.”” This only made Ronnie want to prove his skill was real and he gave his father two coat hangers, showed him how to use them, and set him about in the area where the pipe was. When Harry came to the exact location the hangers crossed each other and Harry exclaimed “I’ll be God damned.” He didn’t doubt his son’s ability after that. Ronnie says it doesn’t work for everyone but there are

still some people around that can do it.

   His description is to take two coat hangers and open them up in an l (ell) shape. Hold them together with both hands with the thumbs touching. When the diviner comes to the pipe the wires will cross one another in the exact way the pipe is lying underground.

   He remembers that the late Harold Carter of Brookfield was a good diviner. One homeowner in Truro was having a terrible time trying to find water and they brought Harold in to help them. Harold walked around the yard for a few minutes and then told

them there wasn’t any water where they were drilling. He stepped across the driveway with his witching stick and announced that was where the water was. Sure enough when the backhoe dug over there the water came gushing out.