A boy water diviner from the early 18th-century.

Water divining or dowsing or water witching is the process by which a human being allegedly uses some divine gift to find where water is located below the earth’s surface. This magical thinking helped folks decide where to dig for wells. It’s hokum, of course, but hokum with a long history. In 1954, a brief newsreel profiled Catherine Bent, a Brit who supposedly was an expert in the field. She believed fully in her “powers,” her body going into wild spasms as she received information about where the H2O was hidden. Watch it here.

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