Post by JoannaL on Apr 29, 2022 14:55:00 GMT -5
'Witching' for Corpses at National Forensic Academy
The National Forensic Academy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is teaching law enforcement officers to “witch” the location of human remains utilizing divining rods, i.e., two twigs or pieces of metal. The diviner walks in a straight line while holding the divining rods until they cross in the direction of the object being sought – in this case, a corpse.
According to Arpad Vass, a 62-year-old forensic anthropologist and instructor at Oak Ridge, his metal rods can detect “piezoelectricity,” a charge in certain materials such as crystals, and are capable of detecting skeletal remains because they produce the same charge. However, he emphasizes, it is necessary to have rods with the “right voltage” and to walk with a specific cadence.
But not everyone agrees. Professor William Whittaker, an archeologist and expert on ground-penetrating radar at the University of Iowa, has found no evidence to support the practice. “Since dowsing is used to find whatever the believer wants to find, this should be a clue that it really finds nothing,” Whittaker observes. “It is wishful thinking to believe that it can magically find whatever the dowser is seeking.” The crossing of rods where a human body is buried, he adds, is most likely attributable to “the ideomotor effect.” Witching rods are very loose and swing easily, he explains, so when people approach an area where they consciously or unconsciously suspect a burial, they naturally slow down or bend forward slightly, triggering the rods to cross.
Divining is nothing new. It is a centuries-old practice and through the years, people have used divining rods to detect everything from water to gold to oil to precious gems.
Needless to say, many feel Vass’s 10-week course, which, in addition to witching for bodies, teaches students to analyze bloodstain patterns, another dubious forensic “science,” is a waste of time. In particular, some experts are distressed that a Vass trainee recently succeeded in getting witching results admitted as evidence in a Georgia murder trial. Chris Fabricant, a lead attorney for the Innocence Project, fears this could set a legal precedent that will allow witching-based evidence in other trials. “The search for the truth is never advanced through junk science,” he insists.
Sources: Shira Li Bartov, Newsweek, March 31, 2022; and Tim Cushing, TechDirt, March 30, 2022.
