Dowsing for water...

Dowsing for water...  This is very popular here, a bit to my surprise because in general the people I know here are big on science, and not at all believers in magic or direct supernatural intervention (at least not in everyday life).  It's also surprising to me for another reason: so far as I can tell, you can drill for water anywhere here and you'll strike water.  I've also had people use dowsing in an effort to locate underground water pipes.  We have a large number of such pipes here (mainly for irrigation), so there's a very real danger of digging into one and breaking it.  Of the five efforts to locate a pipe by dowsing that I have witnessed, all failed outright.  Yet the belief continues :)

This article has a great discussion of the entire phenomenon, including a possible explanation for the generally unexplained (and documented) success of dowsers for siting wells.  The explanation makes sense to me...