- Some call it "divining." Some call it "witching."
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- Those who know the secrets say there is a true scientific
basis for the ability to locate unmarked graves with divining rods.
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- The mystifying process recently helped local property
owner Lanier Edwards resolve what could have been a problem for an addition
to historic Shepard Cottage on Barbour Street.
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- Edwards wants to add on to the small raised cottage to
create additional office space. When the board of zoning adjustments heard
his application for a setback variance, board members approved it on two
conditions: that he work with the Historic Preservation Commission to make
the addition compatible with the building, and that he determine the location
of two old graves reported to be on the property.
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- If the graves were in fact there, and were in the path
of the addition, he would have to seek special approval through the state.
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- Although Edwards thought locating the graves might be
the more serious of the two conditions to satisfy, a Tribune reader quickly
put his concerns to rest. Before the week was out after the story ran,
the graves had been located and marked with little flags. To Edwards' relief,
they do not lie in the path of his proposed addition.
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- The local man who "divined" the gravesites
declined to have his picture made and would not let The Tribune publish
his name. Since his craft appears somewhat more like wizardry than witchcraft,
we will refer to him as "Wizard."
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- Wizard says one reason he doesn't want publicity-although
a lot of people in Eufaula know who he is-is because "11 out of 10
don't believe it."
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- Wizard learned his divining secrets from his grandfather
when he was eight years old. "It works," he says. There are some
secrets he knows about his craft he will not disclose.
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- Wizard uses divining rods, but he says "old people
used to use willow branches." Wizard says there is a scientific reason
that "divining" works, even though "a lot of people don't
believe in it now. The scientific reason he explains is based on magnetism
and positive and negative attraction.
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- "We are negative, but the ground is positive. It's
just like Benjamin Franklin and the lightning rod-the lightning is trying
to find ground."
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- Wizard says he likes to use wire instead of willow because
he thinks it works better. He points out that people have used divining
rods for all sorts of things. One of the more common uses in addition to
locating unmarked graves is to locate underground water, but it can be
used even to locate things like car keys.
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- Wizard says he was born in Salter Hospital on the Bluff
and was real familiar with the area as a child. He remembered there had
been grave markers in the Shepard Cottage area, but he didn't remember
exactly where they were.
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- "Now I know for a fact where the remains are. What
I measured out was a grown male and a grown female."
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- He says determining the sex of the remains is another
secret that he cannot disclose.
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- "I just have to keep it under my hat." He claims
he can also tell how tall people were.
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- Wizard's conclusion that the graves contain remains of
two adults contradicts an account in "Historic Eufaula: A Treasury
of Southern Architecture," which says the graves are thought to contain
a woman and her child.
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- Wizard says the two adults were buried in the traditional
way in that their heads are to the west. "The Good Book says we will
rise to the East, and that's why people are buried with their heads to
the west," Wizard says. He can tell which end is the head and which
is the feet "because there is more magnetism in the rib cage."
He can determine the approximate height of the person.
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- There is one thing non-traditional about the Barbour
Street graves, Wizard says. Normally, the man rests on the right with the
woman on the left, like they would be standing in church when they were
married. But in these graves it is reversed, with the woman closest to
Barbour Street.
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- While Wizard may be right in saying a lot of people don't
believe in "grave witching" and "water witching," one
who saw Wizard in action found it pretty convincing.
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- City horticulturist Neil Yarbrough needed to determine
the location of some unmarked graves in Fairview Cemetery. He described
what he saw when Wizard put his divining rods to work.
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- "It points in one direction for a male and another
for a female. As soon as you cross over the grave, it does its thing. There
are two L-shaped rods that cross when he walks across the grave."
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- ©Eufaula Tribune 2002
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