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about them."
• The women are members of the Sidney, Mont.-based MonDak Historical and Arts Society. They have been seeking the forgotten in unmarked graves using an ancient technique they call witching. The controversial method, also known as dowsing, divining or doodlebugging, employs the use of bent rods or forked sticks to detect underground objects from oil and water to treasures and corpses.
• Bill Whittaker, an archaeologist based at the University of Iowa, called dowsing a delicate issue that's often used by cash-

strapped historical societies to locate lost graves or by those who have the thankless duty of maintaining old cemeteries.
• "I have met numerous people who dowse for graves and I have no questions about their sincerity or honesty," said Whittaker, who also knows of people who have used dowsing to find the perfect spot to plant pumpkin seeds.
• "The fact that dowsing is used to find everything is evidence that it finds nothing," he said.
• The so-called witching sticks or dowsing rods are supposed to cross when a grave is encountered. Witchers or dowsers also claim they can identify the gender of the interred by suspending an L-shaped rod on their fingertips like a pendulum. If it spins clockwise, it's a male; counterclockwise, a female.
• Despite being discounted by scientists and skeptics as nonsense, the women say it works. They claim to have found 25 unmarked graves in the region in the past two years, some dating back to the late 1800s.
• "I don't know how it works," said Pelvit, 52. "I just know that it does work."

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