He's a fourth-generation well-digger, a ballcap-wearing, churchgoing 72-year-old who's still active in the family firm.

	V.W.H. Campbell Jr. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
	Bill Martin uses a dowsing stick to check grave sites in the cemetery at Denmark Manor United Church of Christ. For 40 years, he's found unmarked graves, unmapped gas and power lines, and forgotten mines using only a forked twig or a couple of metal rods.

He's a practical man. He uses all the tools available to him, including one natural and ancient water-finding method some say reaches clear back to Moses.

Martin is, depending on where you were raised, a "water witch," a "peacher," a "dowser" or a "diviner." Using only a forked tree twig or a couple of metal rods grasped in his callused hands, the Penn Township man detects water flowing deep underground. For 40 years, he's found unmarked graves, unmapped gas and power lines, and forgotten mines this way.

He fails sometimes, he admits, but not often enough to quit. And his tools cost him nothing. "The Lord provides," he said. "I'll use a stick for a while, and when it dries out, I'll throw it away and cut me another one."

Municipal water systems are displacing well-diggers, and competition is keen among those who remain. Few dowsers or drillers will discuss just how many wells they do in a year.

And more than a few skeptics doubt the dowsers' abilities. Even Martin says it's a "buyer beware" market.

"There's plenty of people can witch wells. Some of them make all kinds of claims, like they can tell how deep it is, whether it's good to drink or not, how many gallons of flow there is. I just use it to locate streams and pipes. Even then, I can't be sure."

It doesn't bear too much thinking, he says.

Dowsing came to this country with the earliest settlers and was carried over prairies to the dry places of the far west. Water witches still do their thing in India, England, Japan, Germany and South America.

In the United States, gas line crews, surveyors, grave diggers and even military engineers still often "turn to the twigs" first to locate all kinds of buried utility lines, streams, tanks or excavations. The Army Corps of Engineers has hired dowsers, and the Corps' chief has said he would hire a dowser under some circumstances. In 1967, the 1st and 3rd U.S. Marine Divisions in Vietnam used divining rods to locate hidden Viet Cong tunnels.

Many utility service trucks keep a pair of L-shaped rods or a forked stick stowed in the back. In England, a set of rods comes standard in every Water Board -- British for water department -- truck.

Scientists and skeptics say dowsing is self-deceptive bunkum. James "The Amazing" Randi, a Florida magician who made his fortune exposing mystical frauds, says "the bottom line is that [dowsers] all fail, when properly and fairly tested. There are no exceptions. Even after they have clearly and definitely failed, they always continue to believe in their powers."

Ray Nock, a driller whose family's been digging wells in Ross and throughout the North Hills area since 1900, disagrees.

"You mention this to a geologist, and he'll turn up his nose at you," Nock said. "But I use it plenty, almost every time, and come up smelling like a rose. I think it works on static electricity. You're a charge, the water's a charge, and the cherry sapling completes the circuit."

Dowsing studies done mostly in Germany and Sweden in the past 30 years credit arcane forces that often involve complicated interactions among the mind, body and nature. These phenomena have names like "neutron radiation," "biogravitation," "ley lines," "earth rays," or "the ideomotor effect."

Some Christian sects forbid dowsing because they assume the power simply comes from dark forces.

Martin says he doesn't know why it works. To him, the proof is "in the doing of it."

"It looks real simple, and it is," Martin said, grasping the arms of a Y-shaped wild cherry twig in his hands, the single stem pointing skyward.

"Just get your thumbs out, stick out your arms out in front of you and start walking."

He moves fast across the yard through the wintry gray sleet.

"I don't get sensations. I can just talk to you, or think about anything at all. Nothing mystical about it," he said, heading toward a tall tree, a drainage ditch, a storage shed. Halfway down the yard, the little twig twitches and turns, pointing to his chest. He slows his steps. The twig turns and points straight down.

"Water," he says. "We got three good streams running beneath us through the property, and where they join, that's where I dug my own well. But this isn't fair. I know this yard. You do it."

And so tries a visitor, who within seven strides feels the twig tug ground-ward. She feels around in the snow with her boot toes. It's a capped-off well head.

She can't know it's down there. There's no sign of excavation, no discolored grass, no way to tell.

Martin just grins.

"You can either do it, or you can't. Don't know why," he says.

Lots of people can feel the twig or rods move in their hands, but that doesn't always mean water, said John Petrisek, proprietor of Rural Water Systems, a well-digging concern in Bentleyville.

"I've seen it done, and I've known how for 35 years, and I don't use it. I've seen too many dry holes drilled using that method," he said. "Customers like to see it done, but I'm not a firm believer. It's fading away, as the old-timers die off. It's dying off. There are better, more scientific ways to find a good place to drill."

Martin, however, stands by his way and his record.

"I've witched and drilled wells in seven states and two countries," he said. "They have water. That's my proof."

Tony's Note: My Mom, Judy, is a bona fide "water witch." I kid you not. She found all of the local and neighbors' wells at her folks' cabin up near Hibbing on White Swan Lake when she was young. I have seen her do it, with a forked branch. It boggles my mind, and I cannot explain it. There is something to it that just defies all the normal logic of physics.