Retired telephone worker uses rods to witch for underground water
Posted on Sunday, October 22, 2006
COLCORD, Okla. - A man from the community of Sandusky, Okla., near Colcord, claims to be able to locate underground streams and veins of water using nothing more than a pair of brass or copper rods with plastic handles. With the rods, he is also able to locate underground pipes and cables, graves, and even tell which is the head and foot of a grave.
After Ray Brazil, 76, retired from a career with Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in southeastern Texas, he moved back to the place of his roots - the Sandusky community - settling on a farm place he calls "Hoot Owl Ridge. "There a friend gave him a pair of brass rods. Brazil tried them out and found that he could use them to locate underground streams of water and other buried things.
"It doesn't work for everybody," Brazil said. But it worked for him. Brazil has enjoyed using the rods, and has made more of his own, to locate water, buried cables, lost tools and even graves. It's not a business enterprise for him, but he has helped a few friends and neighbors locate the best place to drill a well and he has used his rods to locate graves in the Row Cemetery to prevent a new burial in the site of unmarked grave.
The rods are made of a solid brass or copper cable, about two feet in length, bent in an "L"shape about six or seven inches from one end. On the short end of the rods, Brazil uses plastic handles like one would find on a five-gallon bucket. This allows him to hold the rods in his hands without touching the metal, and it allows the rods to turn freely in the plastic handles. If insulated wire is used, he leaves the insulation on the short part of the "L"where the rod is held, and removes the insulation from the long end of the rod.
Brazil then walks forward, holding one rod loosely in each hand with the long part of each rod pointing forward. Walking slowly and keeping his hands steady, the rods point ahead of him, in a parallel pattern, until he crosses a vein of underground water or some other object. That's when the rods swing inward, almost making an "X"to mark the spot.
When this happens, Brazil uses one rod and walks slowly back over the spot in the same fashion. The rod then swings and points in the direction of the waterflow source.
Brazil demonstrated the procedure in his yard recently. He held the rods out as he walked across his yard. When he crossed the spot where his electric lines are buried, the rods crossed. He continued on and it happened again when he crossed over the place where he said a vein of water runs, the stream from which his well pumps. Using a single rod, it pointed in the direction of his well house.
He then went to the south of his well house and walked across the yard. The rods swung together. When repeated with a single rod, it also pointed back toward his well house.
His well, Brazil explained, was right at the spot where a spring of water came up and then branched out in two directions. He pointed to where springs were located some distance away in each direction from his well.
Brazil then went to a place on his farm where he had buried some of his dogs, which had died. He walked over the graves, and the rods swung together. He used one rod, and it turned toward the headstones he had put up to mark the graves.
To further demonstrate what he could learn from the rods, Brazil went to the Row Cemetery, where he serves on the board. He walked over some graves, and the rods swung together. Using a single rod, it swung toward the headstone.
But then he went to another group of graves and repeated the procedure. This time when he used a single rod, the rod swung toward the foot of one of the graves in the row.
"This person," Brazil said," was buried the wrong way."
He repeated the procedure in another part of the cemetery and pointed out where he had found one other grave where the person was buried with his head to the east instead of to the west.
Brazil said he could tell if a grave was that of an adult or a small child by walking over the grave with his rods and determining the length of the grave. A number of small children were buried with no permanent marker years ago.
At the spot in the cemetery where a large tree had blown over and there were no marked graves, a family wanted to reserve the space; but a pass over the spot with Brazil's rods revealed two rows of unmarked graves. It was thought best to set aside space for the family in another part of the cemetery.
"Some people use peach tree limbs," said Brazil," but they don't work for me. "They cut a forked limb and hold the two branches loosely in their hands with the single branch pointing straight ahead. When the tip of the single branch pulls downward, water runs below.
Brazil didn't start using the rods until he retired and moved back to the area about 20 years ago, but he recalled helping a supervisor looking for a buried telephone cable back in the late'50 s, when he first started working for the telephone company.
"We were walking around in a field looking for the cable and some guy comes out of a beer joint and asks us what we were looking for. My boss told him, and he asked if he could help. "My boss said, ' Sure, ' and the guy got a coat hanger and took us right to it (the buried cable )."
Brazil has noted a few oddities in the use of the rods - things which have thrown him off. Sometimes articles in the grass or just under the surface of the ground cause reactions similar to crossing underground veins of water, he said. Something as simple as a plastic tab used to identify a plant variety in potted garden plants can be detected with the rods when he uses them in his garden. Millipedes in the ground or under logs or boards can cause the rods to react, he said.
Much debate has occurred over the validity of claims to be able to locate water by witching with rods or with tree branches. Some reject the claims, while others affirm that it can be done.
Because the practice bears the name "witching for water," a few religious groups have condemned the practice as associated with satanic arts. The term witching, however, may well have come from the common use of branches from the witch hazel tree (or bush ) to locate water rather than anything to do with the practice of witchcraft.
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