- Military Intelligence Spied on Americans -
- UK Mayor's UFO Sighting Verified By Others -
- The Grunch: America's Blood Sucker -
- On Parched Farms, Using Intuition to Find Water -
AND: "Yeti" Hairs Actually From Goat

MYSTERIES MAGAZINE  #21 www.mysteriesmagazine.com

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Phil Stine is not crazy, or possessed, or even that special, he says. He has no idea how he does what he does. From most accounts, he does it very well.
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“Phil finds the water,” said Frank Assali, an almond farmer and convert. “No doubt about it.”

Mr. Stine, you see, is a “water witch,” one of a small band of believers for whom the ancient art of dowsing is alive and well.

Emphasis, of course, on well. Using nothing more than a Y-shaped willow stick, Mr. Stine has as his primary function determining where farmers should drill to slake their crops’ thirst, adding an element of the mystical to a business where the day-to-day can often be painfully plain.

Asked how he does it, Mr. Stine has a standard retort.

“I just tell people,” Mr. Stine said, “it’s the amount of lead” in your haunches.

Scientists pooh-pooh dowsers like Mr. Stine, saying their abilities are roughly on par with a roll of the dice. But witches have been much in demand of late in rural California, the nation’s biggest agricultural engine, struggling through its second year of drought.

The dry period has resulted in farm layoffs, restrictions on residential and agricultural water use, and hard times for all manner of ancillary businesses, like tractor dealerships and roadside diners.

“There is a domino effect to the point that a little clothing store goes out of business in a town, because the people living there move on,” said Doug Mosebar, the president of the California Farm Bureau.

The state estimates nearly $260 million in crop damages through August. The drought has been particularly hard on areas like the Central Valley, the state’s 400-mile-long farming basin, and in Southern California, where some avocado farmers have taken to stumping their trees, cutting them back to the base rather than watering them. Statewide, farmers have left nearly 80,000 acres fallow rather than struggle — and pay handsomely — to keep them irrigated.

The dry times have meant good business for people like Blake Hennings, a well-driller in the Central Valley city of Turlock, who says he has a lengthy waiting list and a yard full of worn-down drill bits. At a recent job he dug five test holes, all of which had been identified by a water witch like Mr. Stine.

“We only had one bad one,” said Mr. Hennings, whose brother Curtis also dabbles with the dowser. “How they do it is beyond me.”

How many rural witches are still around is an open question. Water witches have no trade unions — or covens. Few advertise, or dowse full time.

Mr. Stine, for example, offers his services without charge, though he says he does accept thanks of another sort. “I got a bunch of gift certificates,” he said.

Dowsers have been part of lore for millenniums, and many on the farm today have no doubt they have special abilities. Richard Cotta, the chief executive of California Dairies, a Central Valley cooperative, said he vividly remembered the first time he saw a witch.

“I was 6 years old,” Mr. Cotta recalled. “A neighbor’s well had gone dry, and this old fellow came out and he witched it, quite a ways away from the other well. Doggone it, I’ll be darned if they didn’t get water. That made a believer out of me.”

So much of a believer, in fact, that Mr. Cotta recently walked away from a land deal because Mr. Stine said there was no water to be found. “He said he couldn’t find enough water to do what we wanted,” Mr. Cotta said.

Thomas Harter, a hydrologist at the University of California, Davis, who runs workshops with farmers looking to drill wells, said there was no scientific evidence that dowsers had special talent at finding water. They are, however, usually much cheaper than the various scientific tools, like electromagnetic imaging or seismic studies, that can help find aquifers.

“It’s worth a bottle of whiskey to have a guy come out,” Dr. Harter said.

But Dr. Harter also said men like Mr. Stine, who worked in the irrigation business for nearly half a century, could have an intuitive sense of where water was, simply by dint of knowing the territory.

In the Central Valley, which was once the bottom of a giant inland lake that water soaked into for eons, finding groundwater for domestic use is pretty easy, Dr. Harter said. But Mr. Stine’s efforts are reserved for agricultural wells, which need to produce much more water and sometimes can run 1,000 feet deep.

Mr. Stine is 77 and retired from a successful irrigation business here in Waterford, a town of about 7,000 on the banks of a slender section of the Tuolumne River, the same river from which he now cuts his willow branches.

What does he look for in a good dowsing rod?

“It’s got to have leaves on it, and it can’t really be bigger than your finger,” Mr. Stine said. “And you got to find one with a fork in it.”

He says he was taught his dark arts many years back by a fellow irrigator who used a metal coat hanger and a hard hat to dowse.

“He used a metal rod and wore a metal hat, and that thing would hit his head,” Mr. Stine said. “So he always wore that hat.”

The American Society of Dowsers, an organization based in Vermont, claims more than 3,000 members who use various tools — pendulums, L-shaped rods, bobbers — on all manner of mystery, finding minerals and lost objects, and even attaining “ancient wisdom,” according to the group’s Web site.

“Dowsing is a system that uses tools,” said George Weller, the society’s national president. “And the tools give you an answer.”

Mr. Stine, a plain-spoken Baptist, claims no connection with a higher power or otherworldly sensations when dowsing, merely a strong tugging in the hands. “You can feel it twist,” he said. “You can’t hang on to it. It will actually break in your hand.”

On an afternoon not long ago, Mr. Stine was summoned to a parched patch of earth outside Merced, Calif., owned by Mr. Assali and Mr. Cotta.

Mr. Stine’s process is simple: walk the eastern edge of the property with the willow held straight up. When it bends toward him, he marks the spot with a flag and keeps walking. If he gets two or three in quick succession, he is convinced there is a stream somewhere underfoot.

On Mr. Assali’s and Mr. Cotta’s land, Mr. Stine worked fast, practically speed-walking. And then, after about 150 feet, the willow bowed suddenly — inexplicably — toward Mr. Stine’s chest.

“There it goes,” he said, his hands straining against the stick.

And so it went, again and again as Mr. Stine moved along the property’s perimeter, planting perhaps 20 flags. Mr. Assali said he would start drilling on Mr. Stine’s recommendation as soon as he could.

Source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/09water.html?_r=2&sq=Parched%20
californians%20feel%20pull&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=1&adxnnlx=
1223722904-TFj0Cv455G7n+juUGgIAww

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Tapping the spirit world to bust crime leaves police and believers divided.

TEN years ago, Taoist medium Lou Ai Pang was approached by a frantic housewife who told him that her husband had disappeared after leaving Singapore to seek his fortune.

Mr Lou, 61, said his psychic powers revealed that the man was alive and in Thailand. But the news came with an ominous warning.

'I told her she had to find him quickly. If not, he would not be able to return home with her,' he recalled recently.

The woman eventually tracked down her husband, only to find him rail thin and begging on the streets. He had lost all his money in doomed business ventures and died soon after the couple were reunited.

The housewife was one in a small group of Singaporeans who turned to a psychic in their desperate search for answers about loved ones who had disappeared or been murdered.

The topic of paranormal help was raised last week at a conference organised by security firm Certis Cisco and the Malaysia-based International Centre for Security Management.

Malaysian criminologist Justin Loh recounted a case early this year when a missing businessman was found with the help of a bomoh. By then, he had already been murdered by a group of youths, who had robbed him and used his ATM and credit cards.

Although the police suspected that he had been abducted by foreigners, his family turned to many mediums to find him.

'Some said he was dead, some said he was alive. But among all of them, one accurately predicted where he was held, where his body would be found and the race and nationality of the ones responsible,' Mr Loh said.

Law-enforcement officials here and abroad have long been sceptical about purported connections to the spirit world, saying that paranormal tips are a waste of time and resources.

'These leads will never stand up in a court of law as evidence. It's just rubbish,' said private investigator Lionel de Souza, a retired detective with over 20 years' experience.

It is a view shared throughout the police and legal community. Retired senior detective Lim Beng Gee said psychics had never successfully helped the police solve a case in Singapore.

'But there certainly have been many instances when victims have parted with lots of money to these mediums with no results,' he said.

Crime Library founder Joseph Tan said he had seen some people cheated by shady psychics. He pointed to one case, where a teenage girl had disappeared from home. Her mother searched Pulau Ubin and Kusu Island on the advice of a temple medium.

A $3,000 bill later, the woman's daughter came home on her own. She had been staying with a friend all the while.

Mr Tan said: 'More often than not, they may end up being cheated. But when religious beliefs are involved, how do you argue with them, especially when they become defensive and think I am belittling their faith?'

While psychics have claimed to help police investigations everywhere from the United States to Malaysia, Singapore police are loath to turn to paranormal clues.

A senior police officer, who has been in the force for about 15 years, told The Straits Times: 'As far as I know, we do not get the help of mediums to look for missing persons or solve our cases - not now, not in the past, not ever.'

A retired detective with 30 years' experience said it was a matter of pride: 'Nothing beats solid policing work. After hard work has cracked a case, you can gloat about it with your colleagues. If you do it through the supernatural, there's no pride.'

However, Mr Eugene Toh, the president of the Society of the Paranormal Investigators here, said paranormal help should not be dismissed out of hand.

'There are still some things around us which cannot be explained. At the very least, paranormal help could provide the police with some leads if (the investigation) does not turn up anything,' he said.

The most prominent case here which highlighted how desperation can drive one to give the paranormal some credence was in 2004, when an eight-year-old girl, Huang Na, was murdered by a Malaysian vegetable packer.

Her desperate mother, Madam Huang Shuying, scoured Bukit Timah Hill and Mount Faber after a relative had a vision that she was being held on a hill.

In the end, the vision was on the money. The decomposed body of little Huang Na was found stuffed in a box in Telok Blangah Hill Park three weeks after she had gone missing.

Some legal experts say police should keep an open mind about the paranormal world.

'Officially, any policeman worth his salt will tell you that he does not employ such assistance,' said Mr Loh. 'Any psychic or medium would be most reluctant to come forward to help. They will easily become the prime suspects in, for example, a murder case, because the police will wonder why they know so much.

'While some instances of a psychic or a medium helping to solve a crime can be explained by coincidence or science, there are others which one cannot fully account for.'

Most mediums The Straits Times spoke to said it was rare to receive a request from a person looking for a loved one. Medium Chew Hon Thin, 62, said: 'Most people come to me to ask for help in getting rich or in improving relations among family members.'

Lawyer Amolat Singh said that evidence submitted by mediums would not be accepted in a court of law.

'Most of our literature and the training of experts is science-based. So the evidence of mediums is considered to be in the legal twilight zone,' he said.

'If such evidence is used and accepted, we're opening the floodgates to the realm of the unknown and the unprovable. Then, where do we go from there?'

It is not uncommon for psychics in the US and United Kingdom to claim that they have helped the police to crack cases where there are few leads, although these have rarely been acknowledged by the police forces. Last year, on a documentary televised on CNN, the New York police turned to prominent psychic Phil Jordan in the unsolved murder of a woman.

The psychic was able to describe her two assailants, pick their photos out of a stack of mug shots and described the house where they went for a party after the murder. However, police forces in countries such as the US, UK and New Zealand have officially said that they do not regard psychics as credible or useful in cases.

Last year, a New Zealand newspaper asked the police if they would act on a psychic tip that said a missing man had been murdered and buried near a waterfall. The answer from an officer?

'While we would love to go up there and start digging away, spiritual communications were not considered a credible foundation for investigation.'

Source: The Strait Times
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_289166.html

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Scientists in the US who have examined hairs claimed to belong to a yeti in India say that in fact they belong to a species of Himalayan goat.

They say that DNA tests on the hairs - obtained from the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya - show that they are from a goat known as a Himalayan Goral.

The rough-haired creature has a grey-brown coat and is between 95-130cm (37-51in) in length.

It was not previously thought to roam so far south of its known habitat.

Those who believe in the existence of the little known Indian version of the legendary yeti - or abominable snow man - say it is an ape-like creature called mande barung - or forest man.

The BBC was given the hairs by passionate yeti believer Dipu Marak, who retrieved them from a site in dense jungle after the mande barung was allegedly seen by a forester for three days in a row in 2003.

'Interesting result'

"We always knew that the link between the sightings of the Indian yeti and the finding of the hairs was purely circumstantial," said ape expert Ian Redmond who carried out a preliminary series of tests on the hairs earlier this year which proved inconclusive.

"Nevertheless, the DNA test is an interesting result because the reported location where this sample was collected is way south of the published distribution maps of the Goral species, which is said to live between 1,000 to 4,000 metres up in the Himalayas.

"Perhaps we have a more modest discovery - extending the known range of the goral rather than confirming the existence of the lowland yeti," he said.

Mr Marak said that the hairs could have provided compelling evidence of the existence of a black and grey ape-like animal which stands about 3m (nearly 10ft) tall.

"While these results are discouraging, it does not affect my firm conviction that there is a yeti-like creature out there," he said. "It has been seen too often for it to be dismissed as nothing more than a myth."

'Startling resemblance'

In recent years different witnesses in the West, South and East Garo hills of Meghalaya say that they have seen the creature, which Mr Marak estimates to weighs about 300kg (660lb) and is herbivorous, surviving on fruit, roots and tree bark.

Scientists said that initial microscopic tests on the hairs were "potentially very exciting" as they bore a "startling resemblance" to similar suspected yeti hairs collected by Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary.

After the microscope tests, the hairs were sent to a lab in the US for DNA analysis. By a "process of elimination" the hairs from India were compared with hairs from other animals known to live in the area around the Garo hills.

The first series of tests were carried out at Oxford Brookes University in central England with award-winning primatologist Anna Nekaris and microscopy expert Jon Wells from the university's anthropology department.

Using some of the most sophisticated microscopes in Britain, the hairs were magnified up to 200 times and then compared with a database of other hairs provided to Mr Redmond from Oxford's Natural History Museum and the primatology department at Oxford Brookes University.

After the tests were completed, Mr Redmond - who is also a senior consultant for the UN's Great Ape Survival Project - and Ms Nekaris were able to rule out the "obvious candidates" to whom the hairs might belong.

However the hairs were then sent to the US for further tests where the link with the goral goat was established.

Source: BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7666900.stm