IN RECENT DECADES, geophysicists have invented a number of delicate instruments for exploring underground geological features. In the oil industry, for example, a seismograph can map with a fair degree of accuracy the depths of various strata. It cannot detect the presence of oil, but it can discover a rock structure in which the probability of oil may be great enough to warrant drilling. As yet, science has found no means by which the actual presence of deeply buried minerals (such as oil or water) can be detected from the surface short of actual digging.
Pseudo-science operates under no such limitations. In this chapter, we shall discuss two curious instruments for sub-surface exploration, the dowsing rod and the pendulum, and glance briefly at the use of these and similar gadgets (known as “doodlebugs”) in oil prospecting.
Dowsing is the art of finding underground water or other substances by means of a divining rod which is usually a forked twig. The dowser grips the twig firmly in each hand, the forked part pointing upward. As he walks over the ground, suddenly the stick twists in his hands as though moved by a powerful, invisible force. At times the turning is so violent that bark is peeled away by the fists. Where the rod points downward is, of course, the spot where water is to be found.
All types of wood have been used for dowsing, but the traditional favorites seem to be hazel, peach, and willow. Some dowsers are able to work with other substances—ivory, metal, wire, and so forth. A few diviners, especially in India where they are often on salaries from local water boards, use only their bare hands. Bare-handed dowsers describe a sensation like an electric shock on their palms when they are above underground water. The ability to dowse seems to be confined only to certain individuals. Some of the most famous dowsers have been illiterates, completely puzzled by their odd ability and offering no explanation for it.
The employment of various shaped rods for divination purposes goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Their use was restricted, however, to predicting future events, detecting guilt, and similar forms of magic. In the Middle Ages; it was associated with the power of Satan, although many churchmen made use of divination rods. The forked twig, for finding minerals, apparently did not appear until the fifteenth century when it was used by German prospectors in the Harz mining region. When German miners were imported to England in the century following, they brought the practice with them. It was in England that the use of the twig was transferred from minerals to the search for water.
By the close of the seventeenth century, dowsing had become widespread over England and all of Europe, and was a topic of violent controversy among scientists. Such formulas as “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, how many fathoms is it from here to the ore?” often were used by dowsers, but in general, the Church continued to frown on the practice. In 1659, a Jesuit father, Gaspard Schott, wrote a book denouncing dowsing as Satanic, though he later changed his mind in favor of a theory of unconscious muscular action. Baron de Beausoleil, a famous seventeenth century dowser, was charged with sorcery and died in prison. In 1701, the Holy Inquisition issued a decree against the use of divining rods in criminal trials.
By the eighteenth century, the “Age of Enlightenment,” dowsing had become a common and respectable practice, no longer associated with the Devil’s wiles. The first significant “scientific” study of the subject was made in 1891 by Sir William F. Barrett, professor of physics at the Royal College of Science, Ireland. The Dowsing Rod, by Barrett and Theodore Besterman, published in 1926, is one of the leading references on the subject. The book’s thesis is that the turning of the rod is due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the dowser, who possesses a clairvoyant ability to sense the presence of water.
From 1909 to 1943 a French writer, Henri Mager, issued a series of publications on dowsing, developing the theory that the twig was controlled by electro-magnetic waves. An English translation of his Water Diviners and their Methods was published in 1931. In England, two members of the British Society of Dowsers, J. Cecil Maby and T. Bedford Franklin, conducted a series of experiments. Their 452-page book, The Physics of the Dowsing Rod, 1939, likewise defends the view that radio waves are responsible for the phenomena.
Although the literature on dowsing is so immense that one could compile a bibliography of bibliographies on the topic, one recent book stands out as the most significant ever written. That book is Psychical Physics, a 534-page treatise by Dr. Solcol W. Tromp, professor of geology at Fouad I University, Cairo. It was published in 1949 by the Elsevier Publishing Company, and although written in English, was printed in the Netherlands.
A publisher’s leaflet states that Dr. Tromp was born in 1909, took his doctorate in geology in 1932 at Leyden University, Holland, and was appointed professor at Fouad I University in 1947. His experiments on dowsing were conducted at Leyden and later in Delft, Holland. This research convinced Tromp that dowsing was a real phenomenon, and due to electro-magnetic fields surrounding the underground substances. These fields, he believes; affect similar fields in the brain of the dowser. His book contains hundreds of impressive charts, tables, and diagrams, including twenty-five pages of electro-cardiograms obtained by attaching electrodes to the hands of dowsers.
The first half of Tromp’s ponderous work is devoted to electro-magnetic fields in the earth’s atmosphere, under the ground, and surrounding living organisms. Somehow, it is the interaction of these fields which explains dowsing. Tromp is convinced that not only can a dowser locate underground substances, but he can also determine a person’s sex. If the dowser stands on the left side of a reclining man, and lets the twig turn above the man’s head, the dowser’s right hand rises higher than the left. If the reclining person is a woman, the left hand goes higher. For some dowsers, the hands are reversed. One might think this would worry Dr. Tromp. Not at all. It simply means that dowser’s hands have “different polarities.”
For many hours, or even days, after a person has risen from a chair or bed, a good dowser can obtain the proper sex reaction from the spot where the person has been. Dr. Tromp calls this a “shadow phenomenon. ”
The material of which the rod is composed does not matter. The rod serves, Tromp believes, merely as a muscular indicator. If a dowser washes his hands with a hot salt solution before working, his ability “increases enormously.” When a copper wire is connected from the rod to the earth, he loses his ability entirely. He operates poorly if his forearms are exposed to bright sunlight. Wearing rubber soles also increases his sensitivity.
Dr. Tromp admits that dowsers frequently make a bad showing when they are being tested. But this does not bother Tromp. He lists several dozen factors which may cause failure—fatigue, lack of concentration, poor physical condition, worry, too much friction on soles of shoes, all sorts of atmospheric conditions, the presence of electric lines in the area, humidity of soil, and so on. “Trees and their roots are particularly likely to create disturbances that prevent accurate measurements,” he writes. Although he has tried in his experiments to take all these considerations into account, it is quite clear they are so numerous and intangible that he has a ready excuse for every dowsing failure. Nothing remotely resembling a controlled experiment is reported in the entire volume.
A large section of Tromp’s book is devoted to a field very similar to dowsing, and which he believes is likewise due to electro-magnetism. Commonly called radiesthesia, this phenomenon makes use of a small pendulum formed by a weight suspended on a chain or thread.1 Usually the weight is a finger ring or bit of metal, although like in dowsing rods, a wide variety of substances have been used.
Radiesthesia seems to have developed first in Europe in the eighteenth century, when it was used for medical diagnosis. The pendulum was suspended above a patient, and without any conscious effort on the part of the operator, it soon began to swing mysteriously. Sometimes it rotated in circles. The nature of its swinging was supposed to indicate the person’s ailment. Later, the device was widely used to locate underground minerals and buried treasures.
Dr. Tromp believes that every object in the world has a characteristic “aura,” or electro-magnetic field. A person sensitive to these fields will unconsciously translate his impressions into muscular action and this causes the weight to swing. The pendulum can be used, Tromp believes, for distinguishing metals, paintings of different artists, different colored papers, drugs, plants, and sexes.
The pendulum, according to Tromp, rotates clockwise above females, counterclockwise above males. He does not mention that for many operators, a circle in either direction indicates female, and a a back and forth movement, male—while still others find a circular movement for male and an oval for female. The same “shadow phenomenon” obtains over spots where a person has been resting. Similar reactions occur above urine, or the womb of a woman with child.
Tromp’s book closes with a discussion of the homing instinct of certain birds and animals, and other phenomena which he thinks have electro-magnetic explanations. The stigmata of religious mystics, telepathy, fire-walking, psychometry, and the influence of a mother’s experiences on her unborn child are topics he feels should be investigated with electro-magnetic fields in mind.
“Most scientists of the twentieth century seem to lack the courage and the romantic feeling to tackle problems which at first sight seem incredible. . . .” he concludes his book. “It is the unconventional scientist who enables the work to progress more rapidly.” The last pages are devoted to a bibliography of 1,496 titles, of which 700 relate to dowsing and radiesthesia.
An indication of the popularity of radiesthesia. in England and Europe today is the number of societies and periodicals devoted to the topic. In England, there is a monthly review called The Pendulum. Similar publications are being issued in France and Germany, and recently two new magazines on radiesthesia appeared in Italy. “Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing,” wrote Charles Fort, “that the suspicion comes to me that it may be only a myth after all.”
In 1936, the German and Italian war departments seriously considered the pendulum as a device for finding water, and it was actually used by Germany in the North African campaign of the last war. Radiesthesia fascinated the pseudo-scientists who flourished in Hitler’s military forces. There is good evidence that sections of the German Navy actually used the pendulum above huge maps of the North Atlantic in an effort to locate enemy battleships!
This type of long-distance radiesthesia, incidentally, is much frowned upon by Dr. Tromp, as well as the use of the pendulum or dowsing rod above photographs. It doesn’t fit into his electro-magnetic theory.
One of the favorite arguments of believers in dowsing, repeated by Tromp, is that anything which has lasted so long must have something to it. If you point out that astrology has an even longer history, the odds are high the believer will grant that astrology also may have a valid basis. This is, in fact, Tromp’s position. In an earlier book, The Religion of a Modern Scientist, 1947, he argues that planets and stars may well influence the earth’s electro-magnetic fields, which in turn may mold a person’s character and future. He thinks, however, the astrologers made a grave mistake in using the date of birth instead of the date of conception! This error negates most of historical astrology, but Tromp feels it might be corrected and astrology given an empirical bases. There are accompanying photographs bearing such captions as “Capillary figures of a solution of silver nitrate, iron sulphate and lead nitrate taken two hours before the conjunction of Saturn and the Moon.”
In comparison with the “scientific” trappings of Tromp’s Psychical Physics, Kenneth Roberts’ recent book, Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod, 1951, reads like a work of fiction. Of course Roberts does not pretend to be a scientist, a fact amply borne out by his numerous geological howlers. He accepts, for example, a theory that underground water veins bear no relation to the ground-water table, but come from huge “domes” which are pushed up from great depths. In fact, one dome is supposed to come from 57,500 feet below ground! At this depth the earth’s heat would have turned the water to steam, and geysers, not wells, would have resulted. Of course the whole concept of water being pushed up into domes is geologically absurd, but to make it worse, Roberts suggests that such domes are driven up “by the same sort of pressure that drives up oil. . . .” Roberts is apparently unaware of the elementary geological fact that oil floats on water, and is therefore flushed upward by water until it is trapped under inverted bowls of impervious rock.
Roberts, as everyone knows, is a writer of popular historical novels. Before his success as a novelist, he had been a roving editor of the Saturday Evening Post. Although long interested in dowsing, it did not become a major interest for him until recently when he discovered the dowsing abilities of Henry Gross. It is the story of Gross’ rapidly growing prowess which forms the content of Roberts’ book and leads him to declare that “when the potentialities of the rod are more clearly understood and utilized, it may rank with electricity and atomic power.”
“Why . . . shouldn’t scientists, in addition to spending time, energy and money on questionable laboratory experiments with dowsers,” he asks, “devote more of their energies to developing an invaluable, even though mysterious, phenomenon that, properly utilized, would prevent wars, move mountains, turn deserts into lands of plenty, feed the hungry, cure the sick and change the face of the world?”
Henry Gross, the man who introduced Roberts to this earthshaking power, is a stocky, gray-haired, bespectacled game warden in Biddeford, Maine. Roberts lives on a nearby farm at Kennebunkport. When forest fires in 1947 created a serious drought in the region, Roberts asked dowser Gross to find a new well for him. He was so impressed by Henry’s accuracy that he obtained for his friend a supply of foreign books on dowsing and radiesthesia. Fascinated by what he read, Gross began experimenting with his talent, and in less than three years developed into one of the most fantastic super dowsers of all time.
Not only is Gross able to trace the winding course of underground water veins, but he also specifies the exact depth of the water, its direction and rate of flow, and whether it is good to drink. This information is obtained by asking the rod questions which can be answered by yes or no. The rod dips for yes, remains still for no. Although Gross prefers to use a stick of fresh-cut maple, he can dowse with any kind of material—even a long blade of grass. Wearing rubber gloves or rubber-soled shoes has no effect on his dowsing.
In 1949, Henry Gross discovered that he did not even have to be in an area to dowse it, but could be many miles away. Roberts recounts many of Henry’s sucesses in long-distance dowsing, the most dramatic of which was in 1950 when he managed to locate three fresh water sources in Bermuda. Gross was in Kennebunkport at the time he did the dowsing—800 miles away! Mrs. Roberts had moved a pencil over a map of Bermuda, and Henry’s rod dipped when the pencil touched the proper spots. Although Bermuda had not a single fresh water well at the time, and was suffering a severe drought, Henry’s predictions later proved correct.
Once Henry dowsed a map of Africa and found a huge vein beneath the Sahara Desert. It ran all the way across Africa’s western hump and emptied into the Gulf of Guinea! Unfortunately, this has not yet been verified. “There, by jingoes,” Gross exclaimed after he finished plotting this underground river, “that’s something I’d like to go and work on—something BIG!”
Not only can Henry find water, but he can also use the rod to locate people. If he’s calling on friends, he doesn’t need to push the doorbell to find out whether they are home. The dowsing rod tells him exactly who’s there. He can find people who try to hide in the woods. He can locate lost objects. On one occasion he found an outboard motor that had dropped into sixteen feet of water.
On another occasion, Gross and Roberts experimented with drinks. When Henry touched the tip of his rod to rye whiskey, it would then dip only over rye, and not over other kinds of liquor. If he touched the stick to bourbon, it dipped only over bourbon. And so on. It was not necessary even to smear the tip with the beverage. Merely touching it to a sealed bottle of brandy would make the rod dip over other bottles of brandy. “It didn’t seem reasonable to us,” Roberts writes, “that emanations from scotch or brandy should be able to pass through a glass bottle—until we reflected that emanations from the North Magnetic Pole can pass through anything at all. . . .”
As a result of his reading the literature on radiesthesia, Gross began experimenting with a pendulum. He found it worked beautifully. Unlike most pendulums, however, it moved in circles over male anatomy, back and forth over female. Roberts reports that when Henry first swung a pendulum over his hand, “I felt a tingling sensation . . . that became as sharp as an electric shock, so that I snatched my hand away. . . .” In Henry’s hands the pendulum correctly indicated the sex of animals, eggs, and even photographs of people. There is one curious exception, however. If a woman’s blood contains an Rh-negative factor, the pendulum gives a male reaction!
What is one to make of all this? Of course it is difficult to assay evidence presented in a form resembling fiction by a man who is a passionate believer in the phenomena for which he is pleading. But even making generous allowance for considerable loading of evidence on Roberts’ part (significant omissions, unconscious exaggerations, and so forth), it is not impossible to reach a few conclusions.
There is nothing to suggest, for instance, that Henry Gross is either a charlatan or hoaxer. He seems simple and sincere, completely baffled by his peculiar ability but at the same time intensely interested. On the other hand, there is everything to suggest that Gross, without conscious awareness, is transmitting his thoughts to the dowsing rod or pendulum by unconscious muscular movements.
The unwitting translation of thoughts into muscular action is one of the most firmly established facts of psychology. In individuals particularly prone to it, it is responsible for such “occult” phenomena as the movement of a Ouija board, table tipping, and automatic writing. It is the basis of a type of mind reading known in the magic profession as “muscle reading.” Someone hides a pin in a room, and the performer finds it quickly by having a spectator take hold of his hand. The spectator thinks he is being led by the magician, but actually the performer permits the spectator to lead him by unconscious muscular tensions. Many famous muscle readers are able to dispense with bodily contact altogether, finding the hidden object merely by observing the reactions of spectators in the room.
Concentrate intently on the toes of your left foot. Do you find yourself wriggling them slightly? Or at least suppressing a strong desire to do so? Many people cannot read without slight movements of their lips. One of the most surprising demonstrations of unconscious muscular behavior can be performed with a home-made pendulum. A ring suspended from two feet of thread will serve admirably. Tell yourself it will swing in circles over a woman’s hand, back and forth over a man’s—then try it and see. For most people, this works so successfully that such pendulums have been sold in novelty stores in America for decades as “sex indicators.” The explanation is, of course, that unconscious and invisible movements of your hand are sufficient to start the pendulum swinging in whatever manner you expect it to behave. A dowsing rod operates on exactly the same principle. The stick is given a strong tension in the hands. Although it remains upright, it is so precariously balanced that the slightest muscular movement will send it suddenly downward. It is not surprising that good dowsers are almost always equally successful with the pendulum.
But what, it may be asked, about tests in which the dowser or pendulum operator does not know in advance how his instrument is supposed to behave? The answer is that whenever such tests are given under controlled conditions, the results are no better than might be expected from the law of averages. Even in Kenneth Roberts’ violently partisan book, he records an abundance of failures by Henry Gross whenever conditions approaching a scientific test were arranged. For example, Henry was unable to distinguish mason jars containing water from jars containing sand when the jars were concealed inside paper sacks. He was unable to find envelopes containing coins when they were placed on the ground beside empty envelopes. If the tip of his dowsing rod was touched to a coin and the coin tossed on the floor, Henry’s rod would point to it. But when someone held the coin behind his back, then brought his hands in front with the coin concealed. in a fist, Henry was completely unable to determine which hand held the coin.
When coins were put in certain pill boxes and not in others, Henry was unable to tell one box from another. When gold watches and brooches were buried under sod and Henry tried to find them, the results were unsatisfactory. Once Henry thought his stick (in the tip of which he had inserted a piece of gold) had located gold-bearing ore in a brook near his house. The ore was sent away for analysis. It proved not to be gold. Roberts explained this last failure by saying that water had flowed over gold ore and then over the rock, leaving just enough trace of gold to affect Henry’s rod! Since Roberts offers no indication of how he knew all this, his explanation is a little less than convincing. On another occasion, Professor Joseph B. Rhine of Duke University conducted a series of experiments in which Henry tried to determine when water was or was not in motion through a pipe. Henry failed miserably.
For the water pipe failure Roberts has two rationalizations. In the first place, he thinks water does not really stop moving in a pipe when the faucet is turned off. It is left in a state of “agitation.” Besides, Rhine was testing Gross in an artificial, unnatural situation. Later, he writes, he kicked himself for not having thought of building a twenty-foot square platform, covering it with earth, and running a hose under it. The hose could have been twisted into various positions beneath the platform, then Henry asked to trace its contours by walking across the platform’s top. Under such conditions, Roberts is positive “Henry’s rod would have pointed unerringly to the hose . . . a thousand times out of a thousand tries. Unfortunately, however, I hadn’t thought of it.”
Unfortunately indeed! Guessing the position of the hose with one hundred per cent accuracy in a thousand tries would have been precisely the sort of test which the book so glaringly lacks. How a working scientist would shudder at Roberts’ assurance about the outcome of an experiment which has not yet been tried! Alas, one fears, this test will never be made. Nor is Henry likely to try the blindfold test with which he was once challenged by a wise professor at the University of Massachusetts. This test is even simpler. Let Henry find a spot where his rod dips strongly. Then let him be blindfolded securely and led about over the area to see if his stick dips repeatedly when he walks across the same spot. Could anything be fairer?
When Henry’s rod failed in some of the tests mentioned above, Roberts’ reaction was typical. Did it suggest that he should endeavor to set up other tests, such as his hose idea, which might yet place Henry’s ability on some sort of scientific footing? It did not. Instead Roberts writes, “If the . . . experiments proved nothing to the scientists, they proved a good deal to me. They proved above all else that I should have as little as possible to do with dubious skeptics or geologists in any future dowsing experiments on which I might venture. . . .”
Tests of Henry’s ability to operate a pendulum were equally dismal. In the obstetrics department of the Maine General Hospital, he held a pendulum above the abdomens of sixteen pregnant women. After the births, his predictions were checked for accuracy. Out of the sixteen cases, Henry was right in seven. In fact, Roberts’ niece did better in a similar test with eleven women. She was right in nine cases, and one of the failures was later discovered to have an Rh-negative blood factor!
As for Henry’s successes in finding water, many factors combine to make his work seem much more astonishing than it really is. In the first place, there often are many surface indications which, to a man thoroughly familiar with the terrain, are clues to underground water. Game warden Gross is certainly well acquainted with the area, and there is no question that he is a shrewd, intelligent man. On page 46 he traces a vein to a spot which had always “hampered . . . farm equipment because of its sogginess.” On page 276 he picks a spot for drilling where the vein is so close to the surface “that the surrounding sod and brush, in spite of the extreme drought, were moist and green.” There is every indication that he is completely familiar with the clays, shell deposits, sands, and other formations characteristic of the region. Although he may not be conscious of it, he could easily be picking up important geological clues from the surroundings he knows so well.
In many cases when Henry’s dowsing confirmed knowledge already possessed by someone, it is not incredible to suppose he may have acted as an unconscious “muscle reader”—gathering clues from the reactions of those present and transmitting this information to his hands.
But the most important factor of all is the simple fact that if you dig deep enough, almost anywhere, you are bound to hit water. Water fairly close to the surface is far more plentiful than one might think, and the odds of finding it at shallow depth, at a spot picked at random, are in many regions very high. Actually, water seldom occurs in “veins” (except in rare cases where rock fractures or cavities permit it). There is merely a variable porosity of ground-water below a certain level, which varies from year to year and season to season. In most areas, it is impossible to avoid finding ground-water, though it is seldom in sufficient quantity to supply more than a local household.
Bermuda is such a region. As on similar limestone islands, the fresh rain water soaks down through the porous lime and floats above the salty ground-water. A well dug to this spot, anywhere on the island, will skim off fresh water, though only in small quantities. Roberts once expressed to reporters the opinion that the water Henry found in Bermuda came from underground streams that originated on the North American continent!
Even allowing for Roberts’ loading of data, he records several notable failures on the part of Henry’s water dowsing. Like Dr. Tromp, he has easy excuses. In one case, when Henry had predicted water at sixteen feet, it proved to be six feet, but this was because the “vein had run into an obstruction . . . and set up a pressure area.” On another occasion, the use of dynamite had diverted the vein. At still another spot, the water was pushed out of its course by the concussion of a drill. Even the weight of a bulldozer moving across the surface, Roberts claims, will crush and divert veins. Since it is difficult to sink a well without some ground disturbances of these sorts, it is not hard to find excuses for failures. If the water is there—as in most cases it would be regardless of how the spot were selected—fine. If not, the vein was “diverted.” And how does Roberts know the vein was diverted? Because it wasn’t where Henry said it would be, and Henry is never wrong.
Estimates of depth, it should be pointed out, are extremely difficult to verify. Roberts often speaks of Henry’s predictions being accurate to the inch, though anyone who has ever tried to measure the depth of the source of water in a well knows how preposterous such precision would be. In some cases, Henry was off many feet, as in the case of one of the Bermuda wells. From Kennebunkport he estimated the depth at fifteen feet. His on-the-spot check showed the depth to be thirty feet. The final drilling found water at seventy-three feet.
Measurements of rate of flow are even more difficult to make, and moreover, have wide seasonal variations. As Thomas Riddick, an engineer in the water-works field, wrote in his article “Dowsing Is Nonsense”2 (Harpers, July, 1951): “There is no water-works engineer in America who would certify the yield of any well to the quarter-gallon per minute even after a forty-eight hour pumping test with the most precise measurements.” Needless to say, such careful tests are seldom made after one of Henry’s quart-per-minute predictions.
Water dowsing is far from a harmless and inexpensive superstition. At the moment, untold numbers of dowsers throughout the entire world are being paid handsomely for their services. Recently Roberts and Gross have formed a company called Water Unlimited, Inc., which charges a minimum of $100 (plus travel expenses) for dowsing a single well. For some jobs, the cost may run as high as a thousand.
An even greater waste of funds results from the use of pendulums and more complex devices for the finding of oil. From the early days of the oil industry until the present, geologists and oil producers have been plagued by charlatans and cranks who operate some type of fantastic device supposed to be an infallible indicator of oil. “Oil smellers” was the term originally applied to such contraptions, though in recent years the term “doodlebug” has become more common.
Usually it is the gullible farmer who pays.3 A smooth-talking doodlebug operator will charge anywhere from ten dollars to a small fortune for a survey of the farm. Later, if an oil company drills on the property, it often meets stubborn resistance from the farmer, who is convinced the well is being sunk in the wrong spot. Ten years ago, he insists, he paid a “geologist” to go over the land and show him exactly where the oil was.
In many cases, operators of doodlebugs firmly believe in the device. Usually they are proud of their lack of technical knowledge, and bitter against orthodox geologists unwilling to open their minds to something new. Often they claim to have submitted their invention to a world renowned scientist (usually a personal friend), and the scientist admitted he was unable to understand how it worked. Most modern doodlebugs operate on a gravity principle, or they detect electro-magnetic radiations of obscure sorts which emanate from the oil. They are often elaborately designed and beautifully constructed, and sometimes resemble a piece of Rube Goldberg apparatus. Invariably the inventor is the only man capable of operating it correctly. Should a test well actually be drilled on the advice of the doodlebug, and the well prove a dry hole, the operator always has (if he can be found) a ready answer. Some type of “interference” in the area is responsible for a bad reading.4
A petroleum geologist in Tulsa recently sent me a copy of a circular letter received by oil operators in the city early in 1952. The letter is typical, and reads in part:
Years of intensive geological study, both mining and petroleum . . . have, given me a broad, general knowledge. . . . I have spent over $100,000 and years of research on a special method of magnetic logging . . . which method gives promise of being over 90 per cent accurate.
. . . I have decided to offer my services and vast experience commercially to a selected few independent oil operators. . . . My fees are very reasonable in view of the many millions each operator stands to make through their use. . . .
. . . My time is extremely limited, so if you are interested. . . .
His fee for a general report on an area is $1,000.
The chances of finding oil in a wildcat well are, of course, much lower than finding water in a wildcat water well. But as one would expect, successes do occur—and none has been more fantastic than the discovery of the West Edmond field in central Oklahoma in 1943.
The discovery well was drilled by a wildcatter named Ace Gutowski, with money from the Fox Brewing Company of Chicago. How did Ace locate the drilling site? A farmer named J. W. Young, who lived in the area, had a bottle covered with goatskin and filled with a mysterious substance the composition of which he refused to divulge. The bottle was suspended on a watch chain.
It would swing north and south over oil—east and west over salt water.
A geophysicist friend of mine saw Young demonstrate his doodlebug in 1944 in a restaurant in Edmond. The bottle was held over specimens of sand. It worked very well, but my friend was struck by the fact that Young suffered from a palsy which gave a noticeable tremor to his upraised hand.
Nevertheless, Gutowski’s well opened up the largest oil pool discovered in Oklahoma for twenty years! Moreover, the pool was under a structure of a type not detectable by orthodox geological or geophysical methods.
But the story has a topper. Farmer Young, with unbounded faith in his doodlebug, had bought land in the area. The new field was gradually extended until it finally bordered Young’s property. And there it stopped. On Young’s land was drilled the first dry hole in the history of the field!