Dowser’s Skill Points Way to Water

Jim Kuebelbeck is candid enough to admit that he looks a bit silly roaming around holding two skinny white nylon rods out in front of him.

The rods are joined at the tips, and he holds the ends up in tightly clenched fists, palms up, with his arms pressed hard against his sides. He will stroll around on 40 acres for two hours or more, and when the rod tip darts earthward, he will say, “That’s it. There’s his water.”

Kuebelbeck, 46, is a water dowser, a professional water witch. He is the man the well drillers grudgingly call when they keep bringing in dry holes.

Earlier this year, he found water on a plot of land outside St. Joseph where a new house was being built. “The well driller got dry holes 100 feet deep and 200 feet deep. I dowsed the property and told him where to drill. He got all the water the owner will ever need at 29 feet,” Kuebelbeck said.

Kuebelbeck said he discovered his ability to find water when he was 15 and has been doing it ever since, now for $65 to $85 per find.

“We’ve brought in hundreds of wells,” he said. “I’m called out at least once a week now, and in all the time I’ve dowsed I’ve never had a well go dry and I’ve never given contaminated or rainwater. The water I find is live.”

The practice of dowsing has been traced back to 2200 BC, and various applications are recorded throughout history. However, Dr. Jay Lehr, a professor of hydrogeology at Ohio State University, says dowsing is totally without scientific credibility and “an obstacle to the education of the public.”