Hide and Seek . . . and Stunned

I thought up an experiment to test my newfound dowsing ability in hopes of advancing it. I’m still stunned over what happened.

I’d been successful at getting my L-rods to tell me yes and no, at reacting to water on the basement floor and locating the water lines in our neighborhood. Then I got thinking about what Hamish Miller wrote about finding hidden objects and figured that would be a good next step. I took a blue and white plastic drinking-water container from our pantry, filled it with water and asked Christine to hide it in the yard.

(A note about our yard: Our neighborhood in Oregon City is on a large basalt cliff, solid rock with little topsoil. When the houses were built here in the late 1800s, basements were dynamited and the broken boulders tossed onto the yards. Ours, like several of the yards around us, is one huge rock garden composed of chunks of basalt, beautifully cloaked in moss. We have almost no grass, with the ground covered instead by ivy, vines, flowered groundcovers, boxwood hedges and bamboo, with a handful of trees – more like ruins in the forest than a suburban yard.)

Within Twenty Feet?

Some time during the day on Saturday she hid the water bottle. I had plenty of writing work that kept me busy for nearly three days. I’d think now and then about the hidden bottle and wondered how on earth I was going to find it with my L-rods. Or even if I’d be able to find it at all. I finally got a break and felt mentally calm enough yesterday evening to attempt to find it.

The sun was low when I stepped outside with my L-rods. I took a deep breath and started to walk around the house. At first I simply concentrated on the image of the blue and white bottle. Sometimes the L-rods fluctuated, but there was no clear signal whenever I doubled-checked.

I changed my method to asking the question: “Am I within 20 feet of the bottle?” If nothing happened, I took a few more steps and asked again. I disqualified about a third of the yard this way.

Pain Points the Way

I was in a section of the back yard and I again asked the question. At that moment I got a serious pain in my lower back, as if I’d been carrying a heavy load for hours. I took a few steps forward and asked again. The rods remained steady but my back pain worsened. I had to sit down, so I walked to our picnic table at the rear of the brick courtyard behind the house. I sat in a chair. The pain eased.

Sitting there, I thought I might as well ask: “Am I within 20 feet?” 

The rods crossed. Then the rod in my right hand swung rapidly to the left in a wide arc until it pointed at my chest.

I shifted the rods back to their neutral positions and was about to ask the 20-feet question again when the right-hand rod again swung around to point at my chest. I thought maybe the bamboo sleeve in my right hand was causing the rod to swing, so I twisted the sleeve around and held the rod in a different position.

Immediately the rod swung around to point at me for a third time. I realized maybe it was pointing to the bottle. That would mean the bottle was behind me. I hesitated, and finally stood up and stepped over the boxwood hedge behind my chair and spotted the blue and white bottle completely hidden between the boxwood and a thick vine.

Christine had hidden the bottle so well that it would have taken hours – examining every square foot of the yard – for me to find it. You had to literally be on top of it to see it.

I confess I was very pleased, and very freaked out.