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superchemicalgirl said:
Ground Penetrating Radar is the machine you guys speak of. It's accurate but incredibly expensive. Our committee put together a grant proposal this year to the Stephen King foundation to try to purchase GPR for an unmarked cemetery, but we didn't get the grant.

The dowser is really accurate. So, when I first met her (at one of the Maine Old Cemetery Association gigs) I thought she was clinically insane. Cuckoo for cocoa puffs. I watched her for a while, showing others how to dowse, but keeping a distance. She finally came over, said she noticed I'd been watching and whether I wanted to try. I told her I thought it was hooey but that I'd give it a shot.

Well, I'm into science, right? It worked when I tried it over a known grave. Well, confirmation bias, right? Tried it in an area where there were no stones, but likely burials. Confirmed what the previous people had found. Dang. As you walk slowly over the graves, the rods in your hands will move, usually cross, due to the difference in the disturbed soil beneath you (it is actually the change in your gait that makes the rods move). You walk the rows, and then walk perpendicular to map out the head and foot of the burial. Stake them.

There's evidence of "unmarked" burials in the cemetery I'm working in. Spend enough time in a cemetery and you'll start to understand the depressions in the ground where there's a burial. Some are slight, others not so much. The earth begins to kinda cave in. There's fieldstone markers on some. Not everyone was rich enough to have a stone. Most weren't.

What she mapped out make sense. Remember most Christian burials are east-west. Kids will be smaller than adults. Generally there's rows.

The dowsing rods can be anything from official metal rods with nice spinners on the hand part, to stretched out coat hangers. She gave me a pair of her old coat hanger ones, yesterday. The markers on it are only so she knows they are hers (it gets a little crazy during the big cemetery seminars) and so she can find them in the grass when she puts them down.

Forgive my drawing skills, they're atrocious. We also found that most of the child burials in this cemetery were at the adults feet. That was weird. The squares are where I have official stones, the lines are "unmarked" burials. Like I said there's some field markers. The revolutionary war veteran has a newer looking stone, and it's smack dab in the middle of a row (but the only stone in that row). When we dowsed we determined his body was under it and the stone wasn't at the head, but rather in the middle. When he got a new stone they must have set it back further from the original one, and with no other stones in that row to match up to, it didn't matter.

You can probably dowse yourself. Get some coat hangers, stretch them out like this, and fit them loosely in your hands (some people put their pinky kinda around them to make them more loose). Walk a + over known graves until you get the hang of it. Go slow.

You can also look online for graveyard/stone enthusiasts in your area. Likely many can dowse (they just might not want to admit it).

I feel a little crazy trying to explain this, but it really does work.

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I am all about science as well but I am fully aware that what we know about science is woefully lacking in some areas... So dousing rods are totally believable.

The local well digger is native american and he douses all his locations.

deb
 

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