Grave Dowsing

for matters relating to archaeological and historical dowsing.
Paul Mellor
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Grave Dowsing

Post by Paul Mellor »

Nice little article from Texas, I particularly like the use of the term magical

http://www.scntx.com/articles/2010/11/2 ... s/9805.txt
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by simonwheeler »

I enjoyed reading this- even though it's poorly written! Good find, Paul...
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Geoff Stuttaford »

Quoting part of that article:
Is it science or is it supernatural? Scientific German and Swedish test result studies show the success from divining could hardly be distinguished from pure chance. So, is it some kind of magic? Alternatively, is it a paranormal technique? Therefore, the mystery continues …
A friend of mine considers magic as unexplained science !


Edited by I.P. 30.11.10 - fixed typo, fixed problems with mark-up
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Helen-Healing »

There's a group in Indiana that do this too. See this photo (link broken) on Flickr of them dowsing for a grave.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Geoff Stuttaford »

I must say that I find no difference in dowsing for graves than dowsing for anything else underground. It could be regarded as archaeology.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by mike »

I watched the video of babies buried in Ireland that were stillborn, and as such was NOT allowed to be buried in blessed ground of the Church/Churchyard, so the people buried them as close to the blessed ground outside the fences as they could, and the children were left in Limbo as it were.These parents/mums were all good people who just wanted their children to be accepted by the Church, it was terrible to watch the anguish they felt with their babies buried apart and not within the fences of the cemetery.This situation has caused so much of a problem now that the fences are being removed so all the babies are together, yet many still remain lost or missing as the ground changes and not all the children buried were known about.If a baby dies/stillborn and is not baptized, then they were not allowed in the blessed ground of the graveyard, this for me is something I cannot understand, are we all not Gods children,who on this Earth has the right to deny them this, but at least now a change is being made to accept those buried this way.I imagine a dowser in this area could help find some of the children still lost outside the fences, it would be wonderful to allow this on Church ground, perhaps they would turn a blind eye to this for the sake of those parents who are still suffering today 24/7.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Bonnie »

Mike, what a moving post. I think this is an excellent idea.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by mike »

I have emailed all sorts of Faiths on all sorts of things, from the special places that are to be found at Lourdes to sites in the US that would make wonderful places of worship for the people of all faiths, yet none of them reply, like dowsing they believe is the work of the Devil...To approach the Church with the view to finding those lost children would fall on stoney ground Im sure dowsing for them,and it might make the work to unite all those lost children all the more harder perhaps.A step has now been taken and the fences coming down has opened the Church graveyard to many more souls in limbo, thats a thing many thought would never happen, but it has under the pressure of all those good mothers.Some clergy have gone out to bless many sites where in the past people who are not baptized have been laid to rest, these sites now are at rest so to speak, with the souls of those buried there at peace, all now in blessed ground and with God.It might have taken years to achieve this, but its done now, and the mothers of those children who for years have been lost to the Church are now back home,a blessed thing.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Grahame »

Thanks to Jackie Notman for spotting this one...
Local man works in cemetery to find the past

The cemetery isn't a place where you generally want to spend your spare time, but for a quarter of a century Skip Meyer has done just that. Some people use rods to find underground water, but Meyer uses them to find the dead.
Meet Skip Meyer. He's a collector of history, owns more than 40 antique tractors, and knows the story behind every building in his hometown of Worms, Nebraska.
But what really makes Skip unique is his fascination with the dead and gone.
So what makes him an expert on cemeteries?
"Study. Dr. Bob Manley was an expert on history and he believed firmly that you had to look at your past to know what your future would be like and I firmly believe that too," said Meyer.
Skip gives dozens of cemetery tours a year all over the U.S. - talking about symbolism and history.
"A column of support - in death they're broken away no longer there to support you," said Meyer.
...and dowsing.
He uses two bent brass rods to find buried bodies.
Read the rest of the article HERE. (link broken)
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Grahame »

This thread has been in the recycle bin for quite some time, but I thought it worth reviving as we don't have much discussion about dowsing for graves. It definitely seems to be more of a 'thing' across the pond - barring stuff like finding Richard III under the 'R' in a Leicester car park - nonetheless, it's worth recording successful examples of dowsing for graves.

This story is of interest as the seeker was looking for a specific grave, that of Nathaniel Paul, the founding pastor of the First African Baptist Church in Albany, NY.
“One day earlier this summer, when I had nothing to do because of all the COVID and so going on, I took (the dowsing rods) up to the cemetery,” Lemire said. Her destination: A plot in Section 99, an area of the cemetery with graves of mostly Black individuals and families, where Lemire believed she would find the burial site of Nathaniel Paul. Born a free man in New Hampshire, in 1820 Paul was named founding pastor of what would become the First African Baptist Church ... <snip> ...Rods deployed, she started walking from one corner of the plot. The rods crossed, an indication of something being detected, she said.

“I thought it could be a coincidence, it could be a breeze, it could be my hands shaking,” Lemire said. She tried four or five more times. The rods always crossed in the same place, she said. She repeatedly poked a rod end into different areas of the ground below.

“I kept hitting something, and I could tell it was hard and flat, like a gravestone,” she said.
Full story HERE.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Grahame »

I found a story about grave dowsing in Halstead, Kansas:
HALSTEAD—A biting northerly wind whooshed across the harvested cornfield near the Garden Valley Cemetery in rural Halstead as a group of about 30 people watched Vince Marshall find buried, unmarked bodies near a broken gravestone that read “Asleep in Jesus.”

One body, whom Marshall, 80, determined was a female by the direction the dowsing rods pointed, was directly behind the gravestone, while three others not marked by a gravestone were in the ground nearby.

He determined one was an adult male, one was a male child and another an infant.

The Halstead Historical Society put on the program.

“Dowsing goes back thousands of years,” he told the group. “It’s a technique to find water and minerals. Science doesn’t really favor the dowsers. I don’t do water dowsing.”

When grave dowsing, Fisher said he looks primarily for historical clues. He said before 1900, more than 50 percent of Kansas deaths were children and he finds mothers with infants buried beside them.

Marshall said he uses metal dowsing rods and when his rods hit on something, they go out instead of crossing inward.
Full story HERE.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Grahame »

Here is a very interesting article about dowsing for human remains, as taught by American dowser Arpad Vass to students at the National Forensic Academy in Tennessee:
Dowsing for the dead is not exactly endorsed by scientists or forensic experts. But it is a highlight for some students attending the National Forensic Academy, a 10-week training program sponsored by the University of Tennessee. Since the academy’s inaugural class 20 years ago, school administrators say, more than 1,200 crime scene investigators from agencies in 49 U.S. states and five foreign countries have attended the program, which currently costs students $12,000.
We do get into more contentious territory towards the end of the article, where Vass talks about his latest widget:
Vass says he has given up using dowsing rods in favor of an invention he calls the “quantum oscillator.” Here’s how he describes it in class: “Everything in the universe vibrates at a very specific frequency. Gold has a gold frequency, silver has a silver frequency, and your DNA has your frequency,” he says. (Studies show DNA does indeed emit a frequency, but no research has illustrated that an individual’s DNA can be matched to a specific frequency.)

If you put a person’s fingernail clippings inside the device, he says, it amplifies their frequency and beams it out to the environment, similar to a radar gun. If the beam (which can travel as far as 75 miles, he says) finds a like object, such as gold, that object becomes “excited” and re-radiates a signal back, which then gets picked up by the device’s antennae.
Sounds suspiciously like the old Iraqi bomb detector scam to me, although to be fair Vass says that he's not selling the device as he's concerned about 'national security issues'.

For full article, Click Here.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by mike »

With the last post in mind I dowsed from my chair at the iPad looking for Gold around me, and I got hits in every direction, with the thought Gold within a short distance from me, make of that what you will folks ??
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by Grahame »

A slight variation here - this dowser is seeking empty plots to dig more graves!
Chicago Tribune" wrote:The concrete Francis family monument stands prominently in Maplewood Cemetery, befitting a founding family of New Lenox Township, and is appropriately surrounded by the family's many descendants.

The family patriarch, Abraham Francis, came to the area in 1831 and established a family cemetery, where he and his wife, Mary, are buried with their 11 children. It later became part of Maplewood Cemetery.

Here, among the marked gravesites and grassy areas, Mike Hickey, New Lenox Township supervisor and a funeral director, is on a mission — to learn how many unmarked graves and available spaces remain in the Francis family plot.

Hickey slowly walks south from the weathered monument to the old iron gate bearing the Francis name. In each of his hands is a metal rod, loosely held parallel to the ground, and pointed forward.

Unprompted by Hickey, the rods swing inward, crossing over each other, as he crosses a grave, and then go straight again as he steps away from the grave.

This pattern continues, although there does not appear to be the slightest hand movement nor a breeze on this sunny Friday morning as Hickey's divining rods indicate the presence of bodies below the ground.

For the past few weeks, he has been mapping gravesites more than 100 years old in the Francis plot with an old map and these simple, straight pieces of metal to tell him the location of unmarked graves and open sites.
CLICK HERE for full article.
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Re: Grave Dowsing

Post by mike »

If you dowse the Maplewood Cemetery New Lenox in places where no headstones exist are a number of unmarked graves, I count close to 8 people with just a quick look, so it’s very possible many more people rest here than is first thought.
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