It is often used to look for water, and farmers in California have been known to ask dowsers to find ways to irrigate their land. Yet despite many anecdotal reports of success, dowsing has never been shown to work in controlled scientific tests. That's not to say the dowsing rods don't move. They do.

What do dowsing rods detect?

In water divining, dowsers use two rods or a single forked stick to detect underground water sources. They believe that when they walk over a water source, the rods will spontaneously cross or the stick will suddenly jerk downward.

Are divining rods still used today?

The medieval method is still being used to detect the presence of water. Divining rods are still being used by water companies to locate underground pipes in the UK despite there being no scientific evidence that this archaic method works, an Oxford University scientist has found.