Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
When mental imagery of a divining rod is conjured up in one’s mind, the picture of a man and a stick looking for water on the old frontier will no doubt be one of the first. Dowsing, as the art is called, has been around for ages. A long-dead Frenchy named Jacques Aymar was particularly good at it.
He didn’t stop at finding measly water though – he was reportedly so proficient police would call on him to dowse his way to murderers.
There was a time in Europe when Dowsing was considered to be one of the devil’s past times. The practice was shunned, and if you were were found to be involved with it a painful death could likely be in the cards for you.
Then came Jacques Aymar – his story is interesting. According to the book entitled The Divining Rod: An Experimental and Psychological Investigation 1926:
“While searching for water one day Aymar felt his rod turn so strongly that he felt sure he was standing over an underground supply. On the spot being dug there was found, instead of water, the head of a murdered woman. Aymar went to the house in which this woman had lived and directing the rod, in turn, upon each person there, he found that it moved for only one person, the widower. This man immediately fled, and his guilt being established, Aymar’s ability to trace murderers and other criminals because established.”
Other sources state the villain-detecting was a bit more than just the rod pointing in whichever direction. In most cases, he’d sweat and pass out once he found the culprit.
The police loved it. They’d call him in on difficult cases. For instance, according to that same book:
“July 5, 1692 – a wine merchant of Lyons and his wife were murdered…After he was asked to do so, Aymar agreed to do what he could and visited the house in which the murders had been committed. He left the house [following his dowsing rod] and following a circuitous route, arrived at the door of the city….He continued to skirt the Rhone until half a league beyond the last bridge in Lyons. Here the footsteps of three men were found in the sand, where they had embarked.
“Aymar then retraced the steps of the fugitives, always by using the dowsing rod, locating the houses they entered, the beds they slept in, the chairs on which the sat and the glasses from which they drunk. The search party eventually arrived at Beaucaire and found themselves at the prison where they entered and Aymar indicated a man who had just been arrested for petty larceny. This man denied all knowledge of the murders. He was led back to Lyons by the route Aymar indicated. He was so overcome by the accurate manner by which his movements were so minutely described that he confessed to the crime and described his accomplices.”
The man who confessed – he was soon after condemned to be ‘broken on the wheel,’ and Aymar became a celebrity throughout the country. So much so that he apparently caught the attention of royalty – though in retrospect he may have regretted it. According to Wikipedia:
“When submitting to testing by Prince de Condé, however, [Aymar] failed every single test.”
What specifically those tests were isn’t known by us at the moment. We will say though, that other people tested him, even with blind folds, and the man passed with flying colors.
Was he the real deal? We don’t know and frankly. we don’t care. Should his corpse ever show up on our doorstep pointing at us with a regiment of flat-feet, well then our indifference just might change.
Read More:
diana says
e ddjjdw,