Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod

Kenneth Roberts

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9798902437598
• Subtopic: Environmental Management

The true story of the amazing Henry Gross - the man with uncanny extrasensory power! ''Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod'' (1951) by Kenneth Roberts documents the alleged water-dowsing abilities of Henry Gross, a Maine game warden. Roberts claims Gross used a Y-shaped stick to locate underground water. Henry Gross (1895–1979) was a, Maine-based game warden known for his reputation for finding underground water streams, or "water veins," using a dowsing rod. Kenneth Roberts, a successful historical novelist, was a firm believer in Gross and documented his experiences to promote the validity of dowsing. While the book highlights successes, some sceptics and studies argue that dowsing is a form of ideomotor action—subconscious movements—rather than a scientific detection method. The book remains a famous piece of literature in the field of paranormal or quasi-scientific literature. It is recognized as a work detailing a "phenomenal" dowser's exploits. "Kenneth Roberts is an accurate reporter. His veracity cannot be questioned!" --THE NEW YORK TIMES

Table of contents

• Chapter 1
• 1) The unfortunate modern American habit of referring to a water dowser as a water witch, and to water dowsing as water witching. Thoreau, in speaking of Walden Pond, wrote of an ancient settler, “when he first came here with his divining rod, he saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well. 55 In Thoreau’s day, a water dowser was called a water diviner, not a water witch; and water divining was far more prevalent than it has become in these days of flush toilets, lavish laundries and municipal water works. To the average American mind, there’s something disturbing and revolting about witchcraft; and while no semblance of witchery or witchcraft attaches to the dowsing rod or to water dowsers, the bad name will live on and on, especially in the minds of the ill-informed.
• 3) Inexperienced dowsers, whose rods work on other substances as well as on water. Henry and I were years learning that many persons find dowsing rods working strongly in their hands when they follow in the footsteps of a skilled dowser; but when left to their own devices, their rods dip equally strongly over spots that have no attraction whatever for the rod of the gifted dowser. The rod of an amateur will often work over iron ore, iron pipes, any old piece of rusty iron; over unknown things; over saturated spots caused by seepage from a nearby water vein, or by an underground accumulation of surface water. To dig or drill in spots indicated by untried, inexperienced dowsers may be as expensive as it is fruitless. The rod of the experienced dowser, however, works only over water. If his rod indicates an underground vein, the water is there.
• Chapter 12
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• 1) We were, as I recall it, discussing the lamentable in frequency with which wells occur in the Sahara Desert, and the incalculable benefits that would be certain to result if those vast and sandy wastes could be irrigated. Henry was asked to consult his rod; and the violence with which it turned down when asked whether there was, beneath any part of the Sahara, an underground vein of considerable size, led us to produce a map of Africa so that the rod could be more specific.
• 2) When Coert du Bois was reading the manuscript of this book for errors, he was struck by an idea. Capri, the famed Isle of Capri, sapphire cabochon set in the gorgeous circle of the Bay of Naples, has always been worse off for drinking water than Bermuda. If Henry’s rod worked successfully on Bermuda from Kennebunkport, Coert asked, why couldn’t it be asked to work on Capri?
• 3) As a result of my correspondence with Rudolf Honkala, chief of the Mount Washington Observatory (p. 98), Henry and I became curious as to the location of the dome or domes that supply the springs high up on Mount Washington. “Cloudwater spring,” Mr. Honkala had written, “located about a third of a mile down Lions Head trail on the south side of the mountain, at 5,700 feet, is as close as we can come to having a spring on or near the summit. The Lakes of the Clouds are definitely spring fed, as arc two other tiny lakes in the same general area, one on the south side of Mt. Monroe, the other on Bigelow Lawn.”
• 4) In September, 1950, by a peculiar and unanticipated series of events, Mr. John Marquand and I found ourselves obligated to do a boy scout act—to write, in the Boston Herald, for a six-day period, the space regularly filled by the Herald's extraordinary columnist, Bill Cunningham.