Word: dowser
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...year-old man with a face like Robert Frost's, Gordon MacLean of South Portland, Me., looks exactly like what he is, one of the country's foremost practitioners of an ancient and mysterious art that science sneers at and country people swear by. He is a dowser. As people all over the back hills of Vermont will tell you, dowsers can find water in the ground when almost no one else can-literally at the drop of a forked branch or the twist of a metal rod. No one knows how dowsing works, if indeed it does...
...Most dowsers seem to like nothing better than to regale skeptics with their accomplishments. Clarence Hollett of Willow Shade, Ky., styles himself as "the Mr. Doodlebug." In the dowser lexicon, doodlebugs are a special breed - diviners for oil. Hollett, a rotund, barrel-chested man, says he has found wells that produce 1 ,000 bbl. a day and, if only he hadn't been swindled by so-called friends, he might be a millionaire. He also dabbles in healing and dowses for gold. "Don't believe me?" he asks, and promptly borrows a gold ring from a cynical listener...
...Robert Massy, a dropout physicist now at California's non conformist University of the Trees, the skeptic is flattered to learn that he has a yellow aura - "a sign of intellect." A friend is told that she has a pinkish glow, which means that she loves people. Archetypal Dowser MacLean, who still works as a chemical engineer in Portland, claims he can divine the arrival of oil tankers even when they are still far beyond the horizon. He adds: "Doesn't make any difference how far the object is if you have the power." California Dowser Jack Livingston...