Bear Grease - Ep. 344: Water Witching

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Witching, dowsing, divining. Is it physics, subconscious movement, or straight-up hocus pocus? In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, Clay Newcomb speaks to firsthand observers, a legit water witcher, a university physics professor, and even MeatEater's own Steven Rinella to try to explain one thing: "What makes the sticks move?" Maybe it's legit but just something that can't fit into the scientific method box. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Have you ever heard of witching for water? It's an ancient folk method for finding underground water, but people today believe that you can also use it to find underground utilities and a bunch of other stuff. It's long been chalked off by science as hocus pocus, but it's still widely used in rural America, and I'm interested in how people view this. On this episode, we'll interview seven people. A legit water witcher, a casual water witcher,

a guy who knew a legendary water witcher, a guy who's a huge skeptic, a lady who paid for the services of a water witcher, a guy in commercial construction, and a physicist from a major university. But I'm only looking for one answer. And it's not if water witchers can find underground water. But I want to know what makes the sticks move, because that's the one thing that is not up for debate. They do move.

but I'll let you make the decision if this is crazy folklore and unsolved physics mystery or perhaps we just haven't asked the right questions. But honestly, you won't be able to make an intelligent decision until you've tried it for yourself. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And hey, we've got some sweet new mossy oak.

Yep, that's right. Mossy oak, bear grease, and this country life hats coming out. Check it out on the Meat Eater's Day. Something's going on in them rides. I just don't know what it is. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged, as the places we explore. He kind of had a kit. I mean, he had an old tin, about like what you'd say, a fruitcake in nowadays. And in that kit, he had pill bottles,

just normal little pill bottles. He would have sulfur water in one, and he'd have salt water in another one. He would have good, what we'd call good water, and he'd put it in these bottles. But he didn't have them marked. He had them,

he'd just had black electrical tape around them and whenever he'd get out and do some water witching he would have all these things in his pocket but then whenever he got around to witching he would have them in his hand this is the voice of my neighbor mark fendall mark once told me that he was the biggest farmer in hog guy arkansas pausing for a minute before he said i'm about two inches taller than my brother mark is telling me a story about a water witcher named set timmons that he knew very much well. Well, he would, he'd get wherever he was going. Of course, he'd had, he had a big, long elbow shape, probably big around as your thumb, probably a six inches handle, and then it ran out

about 18 inches, just an L, completely a 90 L. And he'd get out and he would hold that up above his head, and it would point the direction he wanted to go to look for water. So he'd hold that up and then he had a long piece of, I think it was a brass that he would hold in his hand and he'd start walking. Then he'd stop and you would see this thing start bouncing up and down. And you'd see him count. And then it'd stop. Well, then he'd set that down. and then he'd get his, he had a, it was like an old big carpenter's plum bob on a piece of leather.

And he would hold that in his hand out away from his body. And he'd have some of that, he'd have whatever it was. He was in one of those pill bottles. And he'd look at it. And if it didn't react, then he'd put a different pill bottle in his hand and he'd watch it. Well, then you'd see that thing start going around in a circle. See? And you'd see him counting.

And he'd put a rock right there where he was standing. And he'd say, well, right here at 160 feet is good water. And it'll make about five, six, seven, eight, ten gallons a minute. I mean, that's... He had that level of confidence and the specificity of what he was going to find. Yeah. Of course, you'd be sitting there. And, of course, there'd be the landowner and maybe two or three neighbors

and a bunch of kids bouncing around, and they'd all have that look on their face, you know, like, you know, that look of what just happens? I don't think I'm going to say anything because I don't want to make him mad or embarrass him, or, you know, but Seth, he never bothered him, you know. Out of the gate, I'll tell you that Seth's method of witching water was quite unconventional. But it's hard to say because the origin of water witching is lost to antiquity, but as to what it actually is, it's an ancient trade where you use some type of rod or forked stick to find underground water.

Cave paintings in Africa, believed to be 8,000 years old, depict water witchers. Some believe Moses in the Bible smiting the rock with the staff in the desert and water coming out of the rock was a form of water witching. The Greeks wrote about water witching in the 5th century. The term water witching is primarily a Scottish and American. term, but some call it dowsing, and some call it divining for water, will use all these words interchangeably. The actual name water witching hasn't done it any favors in modern times, proven to be a real marketing blunder.

People used to believe the mysterious movement of the witching sticks was supernatural. Some say the name, though, came from them using witch hazel wood. Regardless, in the Middle Ages, it probably did give a witchcraft vibe, which, which I'm not a fan of nor want to play around with at all. But to add to it all today, water witching is considered a pseudoscience. And for over 100 years, the U.S. Geological Survey has denied any credible evidence that it works. In a 1917 paper, they called it a favorite trick for appealing to uneducated persons. And that, quote, further tests by the United States Geological Survey of this so-called witching

for water, oil, and other minerals would be a misuse of public funds. They were done with it a long time ago. And since then, many controlled academic tests supposedly with expert water witchers have proven that water witchers can't find underground stuff any better than random chance. But I'm just not sure that these academics

and these studies got it right. I just think there's something more. I want to hear more about Seth Timmons. He was born in February of 1912 in a snowstorm. He lived between Hoggy and West Fork. He was an only child, and back then that was a rarity. Seth was 36 before he first got married, and he said that was just a little bit young.

I mean, he had a great sense of, great laugh, you know, outgoing, loved the cause. shop, liked to hear what was going on in the neighborhood. They were like super diversified. You know, they had, of course, they had the milk cow. They had their chicken, had a huge garden, had an old sow, always had litter of pigs, butchered his own hogs, you know, working horses, working mules. They raised mules. That was their big cash crop back in the day, was raising and selling mules down to the delta. Very, you know, what you would think of a typical Arkansas farmer of the era of that era. But yet he had season tickets to the Reserva Beck football games.

Every Saturday morning that there was a football game, we'd see he and his wife going probably three or four hours before the football game. They'd go up there. I mean, you know, it wasn't like they were hermits that lived up on the hill. So, yeah, and just sitting and just listening to stories that he would tell about growing up, you know, before electricity. But I can always remember him, you know, that's a water witch.

Some of them call it doodle bugging. A lot of time people would come. They'd want him to come witch a well, and he never charged. But it was kind of a customary thing that people would come and pick him up and take him. They'd come get him and take him because that way he wouldn't get lost. And he always got a kick out of seeing. Just leaving this area and going somewhere else, which today wouldn't be a very far trip at all. No.

you know, considering he grew up riding at a wagon. Seth had an old-school methodology on water witching that he undoubtedly learned from people straight out of the 1800s. He believed that if he held in his hand what he was looking for, the witching sticks would find that specific thing. He even believed that he could find natural gas. Though the specific tactics and even theatrics vary, they all hinge on a single principle that specifically,

My curiosity since I was a child. Many, if not most people, when holding these rods or a forked stick, when you walk over water, or a buried water line, or even an underground electric line, the sticks will move like they're being pulled by a magnet. And the way I've seen it done, the witching sticks are primarily straightened out clothes hangers or just common thin metal wire bent in the shape of an elf. Despite the criticism, science saying that it isn't real, I'm telling you from personal experience, something moves the rods. I'm trying to understand what that something is. Yeah, you know, it's just, you know, people would just, you know, what do they say? Especially if it was new to them, they had never seen anything like this. A lot of old timers, they'd seen water witches before.

And I think it was a lot more common in older days because whenever you dug a wood, well, you dug, you physically dug a water well, and you looked for a spot that wasn't 50 feet deep. You know, you found. There was a little more consequence to it when you're hand digging a well versus drilling with a big piece of machinery. Yeah. They were looking for any edge.

Yeah. I guess when you think about somebody that was wanting water, they're definitely on the landscape. We know that there's some places are good, some places aren't, some places have water, some places don't. There were people that thought they could help you find it. Right. Water witching and its psychology begins to be understood when you establish a fundamental fact. Good water isn't everywhere.

This is the voice of another family friend of ours, Ozark cattle farmer, Roger Quentin. Like we were talking about the upper place. When I was a kid, we didn't have no water. Still ain't got no water on that farm. But right across the fence, and they were drilled a well behind his, house and they hit good water. They had good sweet water. They went right up on the hill about 100 foot. They drilled another well, fell into a cavern and had good water. Two hundred foot west of there they drilled a well and it's the nastiest sulfur in the world and they ain't,

and they ain't very much of it. We had a well at 250 foot south of that goodwill and it had so much natural gas energy you couldn't use it. And there's places that there isn't anywhere. You get across the road over yonder, I think you can drill a thousand foot deep and not get no water. You know, they just, it won't turn the stick at all. It's a lot of variability.

Yeah. So that's how spotty good water and bad water is anywhere in the Ozarks. Good water isn't everywhere and the success of your well can come down to a matter of feet. Some regions of the country sit above giant, underground aquifers and water is always at a known distance. But places like the Ozarks are karst, underlain with limestone producing unseen fissures, sinkholes, and caverns.

So why wouldn't you look for help beyond what your eyes can see? Water witchers believe they could help answer a question of great consequence. But how accurate are they? Here's Mark on Seth. how accurate was he in helping people to just your knowledge to what you would know he was pretty good i would say the the guys that were drilling the well the well drillers they love to be able to pull out on a you know pull up to somebody's house or future house and see a steak driven out there in the pasture they were thrilled because hey the the pressure

was off of them yeah it wasn't like the guy says well i've hired you to come out and drill a water well and I want you to hit water. You're fixing to spend, you know, thousands of dollars. All the liabilities on the water witcher who said drill here? Yeah, because, hey, the pressure was off of them. Well, and if you hired a well driller today, he essentially is doing the same job as a water witcher. I mean, he's not using any, you know, folk techniques, but he's... Maybe he's using intuition.

Maybe he is, you know, he's drilled thousands of wells, no doubt. in a specific area so he would know water's usually in the valleys or on the hills. And actually Seth would say I can find better water away from a river or a creek or a low, he's up on a hillside. Roger Quentin lives about five miles over the mountain from Mark. And he's what I would call a casual water witcher. He grew up around it. He understands its limitations.

But will witch a well for family when needed. I want us to see how common this is. My great-grandfather, which the wilderwitchers say he would set a well. And my granddad lived to be 97 years old, and they would come get him. He never, and if you kept telling me about those people that are professionals, there is no professional. If they charge you money to which you're well, go get you somebody else, because he don't know any more than they'll. boy that does it for a hobby. But, you know, I've known of it all my life.

My dad could do it. I can do it. Take a peach tree and put it between your hands. You walk across stream of water. If it's good enough, it'll just, it'll twist that you has. And, you know, you wouldn't think you'd do it, but the end of that stick will go straight down. Now, Mr. Timmons over there,

you talk to Mark Fendal. about he's I've seen him work a lot he had a little different technique he could tell you how many feet was deep and all that but it's all the same principle it's just one it is and and sometimes you know I I watched one here two years ago it twisted water out of my hand at 90 foot we hit 30 40 50 gallon a minute we had the case it off and we had to drill a thousand foot before we got him more water. But you found that water that was close. Oh yeah. It was there and I know that it was there. There are many techniques for witch and water. Roger has a traditional and simple method using a forked

peach limb which is a favorite type of wood. Many believe different woods react differently. And I'll try to describe it. You cut a green limb about as big around as your pinky. That's the shape of the letter Y. The bicycle handlebar part should be about 12 to 14 inches on each fork and the single rod sticking out about 8 to 10 inches. You hold the stick like you're

riding a bicycle and the single rod sticks out straight and when it feels like the stick is being pulled downward like by a magnet it's believed to indicate water. However, many people use two thin metal rods, bit in the shape of an L held parallel

to each other and as you walk the rods cross indicating water beneath. But I'd like to ask a more fundamental question. What is the mechanism behind it? What makes them move? Here's Mark. So with your knowledge of Seth, what did he feel like he was tapping into? Do you think he felt like it was just physics? That's just some unexplainable physics? Did he think it was supernatural? Like what did he think? It was just, it was a gift. I think. He'd like, he'd love. looked at it as a gift. As like a human gift. Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those things that it makes absolutely no common sense, but yet, you know, you do it. You know, it's done. And Seth was not

one of these bragful, boastful tell a tall tale, you know. He was, he was very factual. He rarely, what you would say, embellish on a story or anything like that. It's just, he was just common to him. Was Seth a religious person at all? He was. Yeah, he was church going, you know, but he wasn't preachy. I asked that because I wondered how he equated, like, having this. Because if it was a, if he felt like, and I think a lot of people did feel like it was, like, a personal gift that they could do this, how did they equate that into, like, their faith and stuff? You know, like, was it even connected?

He never really talked about it. Yeah. You know, people would ask him, Seth, why can't I do this? Well, he said, I guess you just don't have it. What do you make of the whole water witching scene? So you knew a guy like Seth, but you also carry copper witching sticks in your truck sometimes. What do you make of it? Well, you know, most anybody, I've never seen really anybody that it didn't work with.

And it would be curious to be around somebody that it did not work. with what, you know, what's their problem. Do you think it's physics? Do you think it's a gift that a human has? What do you think? Well, I don't think it's a gimmick. You know, there's definitely something that he's tuned to. But Seth was, I don't know, a lot more sensitive to it, in tune to it, you know, whatever

you want to say. But oh yeah, if I was going to go out here and drill it water well, I would definitely have somebody come out and witch it, you know, kind of make the odds a little bit better in your favor. I like that answer. It makes the odds a little bit more in your favor. The psychology of water witching is interesting and many handle it like a superstition.

Like, let's do it just in case. It can't hurt. Some say witch and sticks operate on the same principle as a Ouija board. Okay, which I don't like. I don't see the connection. No one I've ever known tries to summon spirits while they're looking for water. And like I said, I ain't into witchcraft. And I just don't think that the devil cares where my water line is buried.

But this is more interesting. Some experts believe the movement of the sticks is fueled by the psychological phenomenon called the ideomotor effect, where your thoughts can trigger physical movements without conscious intent. where suggestions and expectations can trigger muscle movements which bypass our will. So the water witcher subconsciously, beyond his knowledge, is moving the sticks, tricking his mind into thinking it's happening on its own. If this is the case, I'd say it's worth its own study, its own bear grease, because I'm telling you, the sticks move and your hands don't.

So is this human psychology that we're dealing with or physics? Maybe it's both. I've got a question for Roger. What would it, like if you were just to, let's say the Ozarks 50 years ago, would a Water Witcher just have been like a common, or just somebody that could do it? Yeah. I mean, it would have just been, like it wasn't even funny. It wasn't even a question of whether it works.

It's just like, that's just what these people are doing. Everybody wanted well, like, go get, it. either Jess Quentin or Seth Timmons or somebody. Yeah. To go witch a whale. And now the well drillers, now them drillers, they're witches, don't know nothing about it. But I would, if I drilled a well, I would want to witch you.

What do you make of it? Like, what do you think? Do you think it's real? I have no idea what the physics is of it, or what the scientific part of it is, but I just know it works. So you think it is physics, though. It's not like some supernatural thing. No, it's just like finding a waterline with two close hangers.

Roger just mentioned finding a waterline with two close hangers as if that were common knowledge in America for everybody. But that's exactly what I grew up doing. We called it witching for a water line, and it works on electric lines too. I've known how to do this since I was as teenager. Am I really this deceived and this gullible? If it is this ideometer effect,

I'm just telling you that it's wild. This is absolutely getting out of control. I've been searching for the answer far too long on Google. I am headed out of the country, headed into the big city to find the answer. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut,

and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. I'm walking towards the University of Arkansas,

campus. It's been 20 years since I've been in the physics building. I am potentially illegally parked and I'm going to see one of my old professors, Dr. Daniel Kenefeck. He was my physics teacher. And some pretty interesting things have come up in my life as an adult that now I've got to go back and see him. And I've got some serious questions for him that have come up in my life that have been challenged. Water witching, dowsing, using divining rods. These are things that I grew up around. Wasn't an expert, but they were common

and were just accepted as something that was real. And I've used them. Used them much of my life. He even used them when I was a landscaper to locate water lines and electric lines underground. And the older I get, the more it feels like I'm kind of crazy. But I want to go see Dr. Kinefeck and ask him if there's any physics behind this that could validate that it works because the science I've seen says it is not real.

I've got a pair of witch and sticks in my hand walking down the sidewalk. And I'm going to the physics building. Walking on to the University of Arkansas campus is a trip down memory lane as I ponder if I am one of the uneducated people that the trickery and lies of water witching have deceived and preyed upon. I guess it's possible. But only science can answer this question. And as we know, physics seeks to understand the nature and properties of matter, energy, and their interactions. Like stuff bumping together, what makes stuff move? It tells us how the physical universe works.

It will tell us why the witch and sticks move. This should be simple. Here's Dr. Kinephak. So what do you know about dowsing, divining rods, and water witching? What's your knowledge of that? Well, I always heard the word dowsing. That was what I would have heard growing up in Ireland, divining sometimes. And it is true that from a physics point,

view, it's difficult to see what it is that you'd be detecting with the rod in the water. For instance, you've almost certainly heard the phrase that is so commonly used about gravity and physics. We started with that as being, as it were, the first force in the sense that it's what Newton had it. And now, as you may know, we claim that there are four fundamental forces in nature that we know. And it's commonly said by physics that gravity is the weakest of them. What are the four forces? So we have gravity, we have electromagnetism. And then we have the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. So those forces are both sort of hidden down in the nucleus.

We never encountered them in there. Okay. The thing is that gravity is really weak. I can't see how it could be anything gravitation. Because we do know that actually while I think everybody hopefully knows that gravity is caused by massive objects, right? Mass is what produces the gravitation. But now an interesting question becomes, okay, but what if the mass is in motion? Does that change things?

And the answer is actually, in principle, it does. Okay. So potentially moving water could do something to gravitational pool? Yeah, the trouble is that the amount of water that we have here in the Earth is just far too weak. Gravity as a weak force is kind of confusing. But the four fundamental forces in the universe are gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear force. These forces govern all interactions of matter in the universe.

period. Dr. Kennefect says gravity would be the most likely candidate, but he thinks it's highly unlikely. When you hear stuff like this, like dowsing, as a physicist, do you automatically think this is hocus-pocus? I mean, I'm thinking that it would be difficult for me to see how to prove that it was true. That would be really thinking. Now, of course, physicists are all different, And yeah, you would certainly get citizens who would be pretty dismissive. Just be like that. Don't talk to me about that, right? I'm more open-minded in my view.

I don't know because I haven't studied it, right? How would I know? And then an answer to the question, well, why not study it? And the answer comes back to that question, there's so much stuff out there to study. Right. You can't do everything. Okay, so that's part of my deal. There's been a lot of research on specifically dousing for underground water.

Right. And basically all the research that we've found has shown that these dowsers for water had no more chance of finding water than someone with the random chance. So, I mean, like, that's what the academic research points to that we've found. Right. And I'm not really that sold on, I don't know how to find underground natural water using dowsing rods. I do believe that I could go out in your yard right now and locate your electric lines. And there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people in the country today,

plumbers and electricians that carry divining rods in their trucks. And man, the way that it was presented to me was completely functional. I've yet to find any science that validates it. But it's tricky because, and here's where the skepticism comes in, it so often happens that when you take something like that and you bring it into the lab to study it, it kind of evaporates. Yeah. Now, why does that happen? Is that because the person involved is essentially a fraud? Right.

Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's not mystical, but it's just subtle. Right. And the particular thing that makes it work somehow is gone when you're in the lab and you don't know what it is. And that happens even in the lab, right? I could give you examples. So that's not like laughable to you?

No, no, that happens. Does it really? Like you go to the lab and it literally doesn't work in the lab, but it works somewhere else. Or you go to a different lab, but it worked in the first lab, but not in the second lab. See, I would think you would say, Clay, that is human bias and just crazy people. It can be. It can be. But there are situations where you find it, oh, that's because we didn't really know what was making this work.

We hadn't identified the cause of it. I mean, let me give you a quick example. So in my field, gravitation ways, there was a claim. this is decades ago now in the Soviet Union, then still the Soviet Union, that they were getting a very good Q factor, quality factor, resonant factor with a certain crystal. And there was a lot of skepticism from people in the West, and they couldn't replicate it. They set it up the way that people told them they had done it, but it wasn't working. And so people were thinking, God, these guys are maybe fraudulent, right? And so then one of the non-Soviet groups sent a guy over there.

and he was tasked to figure out what was going on and apparently he did actually figure it out because it turned out that to make it work when you suspended the crystal from a special wire very expensive carefully constructed wire but you also needed to grease the wire and the way that the Russians did this was pretty casual in the lab they'd just gotten used to it

they took the wire and they typically just rubbed it behind their ear to get a little bit of grease on it and the trouble is you don't put that in the scientific paper. You know, say, hey, be sure you rub the wire behind your ear. Yeah, gear grease, right. So nobody did that anywhere else. But he discovered that he saw them do it, right?

So he said, oh, should I do that too? And then so you've got to do that, right? And this very, like, fundamental thing threw the whole thing off. That's right. So if you didn't have the ear grease, it didn't work. And so when he went back home, the group in Scotland, that's where he was from, uh, succeeded where the other groups trying to replicate this approach had failed. It just, it just shows the,

the challenges that there are in measuring some of these things and even motivation too. It's like you've got bigger fish the frat and this. And so it's plausible that it's just not really been researched enough. Yeah. Yeah. And especially because, of course, there's a moving target, right? Am I really studying whether you can find water with a wooden rod or an electric cable with the metal rod? Those are two, from a physicist point of view, boy, those are two big, very different things.

Yeah, that's right. I would be looking for different explanations in both of those cases. So it is possible that science just hasn't uncovered the full story. It is possible that water witching just won't fit into the scientific method box because there are too many variables for it to work in a controlled environment. This could be the classic excuse for pseudoscience, or maybe it's true. Look back at all the things that science has got wrong in the past,

but also look back at all the pseudoscientists that got about. bunch of stuff wrong. But you are not going to believe this. Right in the middle of my interview with Dr. Keneffect, there is a knock on the door and in walks his niece, Sarah. He tells her what we're talking about. And she says, I had a guy with you well for us just last year. Within five minutes, I'm interrogating her about her story. Meet Sarah. You can't make this stuff up. So I'm doing an interview with Dr. Kennefect, my former physics teacher, and in walks some of his family. Uh-huh. Yeah.

And they just so happened to have fairly recently. Oh, yes. In the last six months. Six months. So his father, which my parents well, and we reached out to his family when I needed a well. And his father has since passed. I actually talked to his brother. And his brother was like, I don't have the skills.

kill, but my brother does. So you need to go talk to my brother. Um, so, uh, we gave him a call. Uh, he came on out, um, had for $150 he will, witch your well. He had truly like a stick, the Y stick off of a tree. Yeah. Uh, and then he had his dowsing rods, which were some sort of gold metal. I didn't. Okay. So he, he started with the stick, this Y stick holding the two ends and walked the property. He said, actually he asked us, where, where's the house going to be? So we kind of told him where. And he's like, where would you like it?

And so we kind of pointed in a direction. And he started sort of triangulating, walking across and across and across. He said he was looking for faults. So he found what he says is a fault. And then he got out his two dowsing rods and walked like a smaller area. And then he was like, okay, right here. He says, of course, he can't guarantee it. But we had the well dug, and they went down about 200 feet, and we have about four gallons per minute.

So is that good for your area? It's not great for my area. So it didn't work that well. No, my parents' well is actually more like 10 gallons a minute. And so if you look online, like there's some rural places that won't certify the well if it's less and six gallons a minute. What I was telling some of my friends was actually, it's a good bit of what I felt was performance art.

Really? Yeah, he was like, well, where do you want it? And so, like, he sort of walked back and forth. There's a very, very distinct ravine on one side, big mountain on the other, and it's like, okay, to find a fault in that, it's like, well, there's a pond on one side, and then there's a ravine on the other.

So, like, where would the water table be? So why did you hire him? He was the one I knew. I mean, but why did you think that you needed a water witcher to find your water? Would that just be like just something that everybody down there does? Yeah, yeah. Really? So it's just common.

Just like, hey, if you're going to drill well, might as well. Is it kind of like, it's probably not really going to work, but it might, so it's worth taking a chance? Yeah, why not? Is that the way you felt about it? Sure. I mean, for $150, it's like, let's give it a shot. Let's see if it works. We were going to dig a well around that area anyway. So for him to come out and go, you know, you probably find water here. You kind of go, okay, like, is it worth like, you know, $1,500, probably not. But $150.

$150. It's like, let's figure out. Let's see what he does. Roger Quentin told us that you shouldn't have to pay for a water witcher, but let's not forget that this guy which Sarah's mother's 10 gallon a well, too. so technically he was 100% on finding water. Some say that you can find water anywhere if you're willing to dig deep enough. But I like Sarah's attitude about the whole deal. It's worth a shot. You might be under the impression that water witchers are these mystical, hippie, bearded guys wearing pointy hats,

but all the water witchers that I've ever known have been practical down-to-earth people. I'd like you to meet a water witcher. a legit water witcher from Madison County, Arkansas, who was a logger and a carpenter his whole life. I think he'll appreciate his simple, no-fluff attitude about it. I wanted to see how he got started. My name's Carl Holt. And the way I got started, just being around them old guys doing it.

That's been 40-something years ago or 50. Oh, I watched them, and they let me sometimes, Use our stuff and do, but heck all the other wood and stick. It was way back there. There was an old man named, last name of Tuddle, lived over at my drive for him. And he's probably the first one I ever seen with you well. Figured out I could do it.

I've done a bunch of them up around Kingston and up on the mountain. And I even went to Yelville and done some of them. When you go out to a piece of property, what would you do? Would you ask the landowner any quality? questions, would you just start walking? Would you use some clues that maybe you know about where water would be and go there first? I usually just figured out how far they wanted it from the house and made a circle around. And if that didn't work, you went a little wider.

You've had quite a bit of success finding water with the wells that have been drilled where you said there was water. Yeah. They've always hit water. sometimes it's pretty deep. Yeah. How does it work in a community? How would people know that you would witch a well for them? Just word of mouth?

Yeah, just word of mouth. Do you expect anything from people when you witch a well for them? Nope. I just tell them, there ain't no guarantee. Yeah. So far, so good. What do you think the mechanics of water witching, working to find underground water, is. I'm not real sure. I figure a person's got something in their body that does it. I don't know.

Because really, there's no science on it. And physically, it shouldn't be possible. But it is and it works. What do you think about that? What you just said, that there's no science behind it. It shouldn't work. I mean, are you just okay with that? Yeah. You just, that doesn't even bother you at all. No, because most people that want me to witch well, they've talked to somebody else I've wished one for. Yeah. They just have to trust me. The old man that I heard about over in Haga, that was a big water witcher, he believed that it was a personal gift. So he really believed that it was like supernatural, essentially.

I don't really, I don't really agree with that. I mean, because they may people are a lot different people. and still witch water. Talking with Carl, you quickly see that he doesn't have anything to prove or an ego to stroke. Water witching is just a tool that he can use to help the people in his community. You don't get a charlatan vibe from him at all or any sense that this guy doesn't 100% believe everything that he says.

I want to hear his process. He uses a Y-shaped green limb. but it's got to be alive. That's hard to explain. You can, how you hold a stick like that, pointing out. Right. And you can hold as tight as you want to. Whenever you go over that water, it's going down if it has to twist the bark off.

Hmm. And the deeper it is, unless it's not as bad. But you can get one that's pretty close, and it'll burn your hands trying to hold it. Hmm. Yeah. I've heard people say that What causes it? I'm having a clue.

What would you say to skeptics that would say that you're subconsciously moving the stick with your hands? Ain't happening. You can hold it like it. It'll still pull. Yeah.

Some people probably think it. I think people that say that a human is unconsciously moving it with their hands, they've never done it before. Uh-uh. I mean, because it's hard to deny that that thing's moving on its own if you've done it. Right.

Will you show me how you make a stick? Yeah. And I want you to show me how you do it. I'll get the burners and go down there and find one. Yeah. That's a hard thing. Well, let's do that. Let's do that now.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises

and getting action. After cutting a live, Y-shaped maple limb, we walk up to his known well, where he knows there's water, about 100 yards uphill from his house. Okay. All right.

Go ahead. So he's holding that tight. Like he's squeezing that, that wood. And it is pulling down. Like, it's actually twisting in his hand. So, I mean, it's actually, you're like trying to hold it tight and it won't do it. Show me again. Back up.

You can. So he's not tricking himself. He's holding it as tight as he can. and as he walks over this well we know there's water here it's pulling out he's not twisting that it's going down on its own like something's pulling on it oh I do this works for you for 40 years I longer I filmed Carl death gripping his Y-shaped maple limb and saw the sticks with my own eyes twist in his hands like a fishing pole bending under the tension of a big catfish. It went down at least eight inches. I'm going to post this video on my Instagram,

and I'm certain people will say that me and Carl are delusional. And maybe we are. But if it's the ideomotor effect, I want to know the physics of how micro movements and the palms of his stationary death-gripped hands can twist the wood. A human doesn't have snake scales or centipede legs on the palms of their hands that can move wood. I just don't. I just, you know, just cannot fathom the physics of that, and I saw it with my own eyes. You just got to see it and feel it to believe it. But please hear the nuance in what I'm saying. I don't know if it really helps you find water. But with all the intellect and skepticism and intelligence that I can muster, I'm telling you, I believe those sticks are moving on their own. And I think that this is a

good time to hear from America's greatest skeptic. And my friend, meat eater's own, Stephen Ronella. When I went water witching with Clay, oh, and first off, I know Clay doesn't like calling it water witching because he thinks it kind of sounds like sorcery, but that's how I knew it as a kid is water witching. I went water witching with Clay down in the Florida Everglades. We were down there doing a different work project, but it came up that he was going to do some water which and we happened to know an area where there had been some water lines under the

ground if I remember correctly it was something like that so we knew in a test site okay and clay rigged up as witch and rod I was very skeptical I remained very skeptical but there it's it's hard to explain something when you're holding those wires something's happening something's happening that I can't explain. Maybe it's like your pulse goes up, some kind of electromagnetic thing in your body, I don't know. But I would be walking along,

regardless of what was going on subsurface, I would be walking along and there would be like unmistakable activity in the rod, in the witch and rod. And try as I might, I just couldn't figure out like what I was doing,

what I could be doing personally that would drive the movement of the rod. right just trying to hold like as stationary as possible and that sucker would bend and yeah i can see where people get the idea that something's happening and it's detecting water some kind of magnetic whatever i can't explain it uh but i'll tell you a quick story just the other day we're having a conversation about ghosts okay who believes in ghosts and who doesn't believe in ghosts a dear friend of mine gives his ghost story, right? His ghost story is that one time his dog freaked out in the middle of the night and kept

staring into a bedroom, an empty bedroom, and then wouldn't stop staring in there, and then went and looked on the bed, okay? So he's like, therefore, uh, that's a ghost story. Now when I hear that story, I'm like, uh, I don't know, maybe the mouse ran through there. Maybe the dog was tripping out. Like the fact that that happens, I can't jump to that it's like ghost. like. There could be all these other explanations.

Same with the witch and rod. The witch and rod is moving. I just can't tell that it's not me doing it, right? Or like some impulse in my body or some ever so slight moment or like your palms get sweaty. I don't know. Rather than it's detecting subsurface water or structures. But again, something's going on in them rods. I just don't know what it is.

You have no idea how satisfied it was to see Steve holding those. witching sticks and watching them move. His head was spinning backwards. But I now want to introduce you to a professional who has the most practical insight that we've heard yet. My name's Colin Deaton. I live in Marble, Arkansas, in Madison County. Been in the commercial construction industry for 21 years, doing excavation and underground utilities, site work. I would say over 21 years in doing the what I do for a living. I've probably witched and confirmed the accuracy of what I've witched out thousands of times. Colin, would you describe yourself as like a normal person? It's probably debatable, but yeah. Have you had any history of deep mental illness or any

witchcraft in your background? Not to my knowledge. You're like a very normal, very rational, clean-cut, smart guy. Thank you. It's nice to hear. This is not a weirdo, folks. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Normal people, Water Witch. Well, the first time I heard about the dowsing was from grandpa, father, people like that, about finding water for wells.

But I really didn't know anything about it until I started doing it for commercial construction, locating utilities and such. First foreman I had, Benny Alvard, is the first one to tell me about it. And I kind of thought it was a joke. like one of the go get the pipe stretcher thing. Here, hold these things. I'll show you how to find the line. But after doing it several times and seeing something actually get dug up where we located,

I started to believe. And then now I just do it every day if I want to know where something is. It feels to me like there's two categories of people that talk about this stuff. And most media focuses on like the folksy people that say they're able to find. underground natural water. But then there's this other group of people that actually are carrying dowsing rods in their truck on a daily basis, not trying to be folksy or cute. Right.

Construction people that literally are trying to find stuff underground. Yeah, you see it all the time, or I do every day, every contractor ever work with, does the same thing. It's not, nobody thinks it's too crazy. We've talked about this at length, but you can use metal rods to find all types of underground. utilities. Yep, it's kind of weird but true. There are companies that sell commercial witchen sticks that have handles making it where you actually aren't even touching the rods. They spin completely on their own. Once again, can the ideomotor effect transfer through a handle

into a rod? I don't know. How confident would you be right now to walk out into my yard, which you've never been here before. How confident are you that you could find my water line? 100%. If you've got a water line going to your house, which I would assume you do, I could show you where it's at if you want to know. So you're that confident in what you do? It might take me a little bit, but I could sort it out.

Sometimes you want to take cues from things you see already just to verify. Because you can locate anything, not just water lines. I could locate a tree root out there and think it's your water line. I would have to play with it a little bit, walk around. but then I could get confident. So you are using all kind of clues. Like you're not just using exactly what's in your hand. You're using.

Exactly. I mean, the witch and sticks are going to cross up if there's something underground, whether it's a water, sewer, electric, communication, tree route, extension. I could walk over that cord right there and it would cross up. It could be an extension cord laying on the ground, power to it, no power to it.

I think that's where we lose people. is you're like, now wait a minute, it'll cross over an electric line, a gas line. This is where it gets really freaky. They will cross a hundred percent of the time over a grave. Or an old foundation that's buried? Yes. So it's picking up on something because it is not, I mean, what does it feel like when they move in your hands? You don't really feel it.

I mean, because you have to keep your hands pretty loose on it or they won't move. if there's restriction there. So you don't really feel it. You just kind of feel them as they slide. It feels like a magnet to me. It's the way I would describe it. Like magnetism, like making these rods cross. This brings up an odd and confusing point.

You hold metal witchen sticks loosely so they can move on their own. But when you hold a green forked limb, you can hold it as tight as you want. Hey, boys, I don't make the rules. I just know them. And this is just wild, kind of unrelated, but Dr. Ken Effect told me that there is a sophisticated high dollar instrument that they use to measure gravity, and it's able to detect graves. As I understand it, it's because of the hollow casket creating an almost imperceivable distance in gravity. Point being, there is some unusual stuff going on in the universe. Like to me, I'm not claiming to be good at it, but I can tell you it is like gravity.

There's no question. Like I don't have to summon spirits or prey or. Like there's nothing supernatural going on here. This is a force that is equivalent to gravity that works every time. It doesn't not work sometimes. Now, I'm not saying it's always accurate. Yeah. Okay.

To that point, I can get false positives, right, is what I would call. it I've done that before, thought I was witching something. Doug, Doug, Doug, didn't find it. Maybe there's something deeper than what I was digging. I can't explain that sometimes, but I've never got a false negative, you know? Like, I've never dug and oh my goodness, I didn't see that. I didn't think that was there. If there's something there, I always cross up on it. Yeah, if I, if I witch out a square before I dig and I don't find anything, I'm 100% confident. that there's nothing in that square. If the ideomotor effect is real,

then it makes me wonder what else in my life is completely fabricated that I'm convinced is 100% real. That's a scary question. Human perception is frail. We all know people that live in a delusional world in some part of their life. It's easy to see in someone else, but hard to see in your own life. But to blindly accept the ideomotor effect is a 100% true,

seems frail logic too. I'm no expert, but here's a quote from an academic paper on the ideomotor effect. Despite its long history and the theoretical importance, existing empirical evidence for the ideomotor theory is not strong enough to rule out an alternative hypothesis. End of quote. I don't want to misrepresent the research. They believe that it validated the effect.

However, sounds to me like it's not. as straightforward as gravity. There is some presumption. And it sounds like believing this takes some faith in something, too. This stuff is just hard to quantify. It's possible, though, that the answer is deeper. I want to ask Dr. Kennefeck an existential question about knowledge. How much do you feel like we actually know about physics?

Because here we are in 2025, we're at the pinnacle of human knowledge and intelligence and awareness of our universe. We assume that. And do you feel like there are more unanswered questions than when you started? Oh, there absolutely are more unanswered questions all the time. In many ways, the development of science involves the creation of questions, not answers. I don't mean we're uninterested in answers. They're great.

But usually when you get an answer, you get more questions. And that's certainly true in my field. we are at one sense much higher than where we started in terms of reaching a pinnacle. That's clear. Newton himself said, I stood on the shoulders of giants, right? He could see further than the people before him,

and we can see further than Newton could see. But we're conscious of not being near the summit. We're not near the pinnacle, really. Just your personal engagement with physics, and you've dedicated your career and your life to this for a long time. Does it feel like you're moving towards something that is infinite in a way like, Even if 25 years from now, if we had this conversation, would we be any closer to understanding everything?

That is a good question. And I can't tell you for sure whether we'll be closer. And it's unclear, of course, how we would define closer. Because we're approximating to something we don't know. We don't know what the real true laws are. We only know what our discoveries are. how close we are to the real truth is, I think, fundamentally unknowable. I don't mean that we can't say our ideas now seem to be better than they were before, because I think that is fair. I mean, we have learned a lot. But how close we are to being, as it were done, is another question. And we know that at times in the past when physicists thought they were close to being done, they weren't.

Water witching merges the biases and frailty of human psychology with the great mysteries of physics exposing our inherent potential for deception. My final conclusion, or at least right now, is simply this. There is something to it. Something is moving the sticks. And I have not heard an answer that completely satisfies me. So if you've got the gall, take some clothes hangers and go out. in your yard and try to find your water line. And I'm not saying you should get a water witcher to come to your house if you drill a well,

but it seems like it might put the odds in your favor, so I probably would. And maybe I'd do it for no other reason than to acknowledge my limited understanding of the universe. And after all this, I am just a little less confident in my own perception of reality. And I think that's good. I think it keeps us humble. It's clear the things modernity has given us so much of it good, but we have no idea what we've lost. Thank you for listening to Bear Grease.

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