There is a 3,000-year-old practice for finding water that involves nothing but a forked stick. It stems from England, and over the years has been called witchcraft and nonsense, said Cukie Macomber.

The Westport resident explained how dowsing actually works before letting Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society members try their hand at it during the group's June 4 meeting.

"After doing this for 30 years, I was never wrong," said Macomber, 91. He has since given up the task because he was overwhelmed with work orders as a dowser. He charged $35 for every job, he said.

Macomber said he can determine where a water source is, which way the water is running, and how deep it is below ground with nothing but a stick. Cherry trees work best, he said.

He holds two prongs of a stick, with the longest part running parallel to the ground. When he crosses water at a 90-degree angle, the outward facing piece of the stick will signal the find, he said.

"The stick will jump, jump just like that. It will pull right down," Macomber explained.

The science community believes the process works due to static electricity, but Macomber believes there's more to the phenomenon.

"It has to be something I'm born with because not everyone can do it," he said.

Macomber was 13 when he first witnessed dowsing. At the Westport Yacht Club with his father, he saw a man walking around with a stick, which the man eventually threw in a bush. Macomber ran for the stick to try exactly what he had seen.

Since then, he said he has found water for the University of Rhode Island's fish hatcheries, located water at the top of a hill for a farmer, and sobered a crowd with his dowsing abilities at the Manchester Greenhouses in Westport Harbor.

"There was one man who was pretty stupefied. I made him hold the stick and follow the water course. That guy sobered up so quick. He was my buddy after that," recalled Macomber.

After finding a water source that ran under the building, Macomber let audience members try with any of the three forked sticks he had brought along.

"Palms up. Thumbs out. Grip it hard," he instructed Gerry Boissonneault.

"I can feel the stick pulling down, trying to break down," said Boissonneault, the first to get a successful response. "You could actually feel it pulling harder and harder."

Boissonneault said when he worked for an excavation company, the crew would use L-shaped copper wire to find pipes. The copper would bend when they neared the underground pipes, similar to the stick dipping at a water source, he said.

"I think it's something about static electricity too," he said. "Only certain people can do it. Not everyone can do it," he added.

But by the end of the meeting, all but two people who had tried dowsing had felt the stick — sourced from an apple tree — pull near the water course.

"I do believe it. I could feel it," said Teresa Vieira, who attended the lecture just to learn more about dowsing.

"It was moving in my hands when I got down closer to the door," said historical society member Kathy Plant.

Some attendees, including historical society President Bob Harding, opted out of the challenge. "I'm too busy. I don't need a new job," he said.

Macomber said he did not see everyone try dowsing, and wasn't sure how many of the successes were valid. He did say that in his lifetime, he had only met one man who could dowse as well as he could. That man was from Acushnet.

Cukie Macomber demonstrates how to find water with an apple tree twig. Video by: Angie Hilsman