He doesn't know how he does it, but he's been doing it for nearly 60 years.

William Stein of Franklin Township, a 76-year-old retired Armco pipefitter, said he's been dowsing since he was a teenager, using a forked stick to locate things underground: water, pipelines and, lately, oil and natural gas.

Stein said he discovered he could dowse when his father and uncle were attempting to use a forked stick to find water.

He said they were unsuccessful but when he tried “the darn thing went down in my hand.”

His uncle, claiming he was faking, blindfolded Stein, placed a half-dollar on the ground and challenged him to find it. Stein said he did.

Although his father told him that peach wood was best for seeking water, Stein said he's used all kinds of wood, even steel rods and metal coat hangers, to dowse for water. But he favors cherry wood because it's strong and flexible.

He said over the years he's found he can follow underground streams, pipelines, sewer lines and underground wires.

As Stein walks across a property and nears underground water, he said, “The stick pulls down, the end of it pulls right down to the ground. You can't push the stick back up.”

Once when he tried to force up a pointing dowsing rod, Stein said, “The bark actually twisted off in my hands.”

But the material of his latest rod Stein is keeping secret. He's using it, he said, to locate underground seams of oil and natural gas.

“I don't know if it would be known if other people could use it or not, I have no idea,” he said.

Stein says he can locate gas and oil deposits by dowsing but has met skepticism.

“I'm trying right now to talk to the companies that drill for gas, but they laugh at it,” he said.

“If I was going to do it, I would do it for an oil company, I have no desire to start my own business in this, I'm old and I have health problems,” said Stein. “I don't know why I got this gift. I don't know if there's something in the body or it's the way I hold the stick.”

Stein said he recently used his dowsing rod to locate an abandoned gas well on the Mount Chestnut Golf Course.

Golf course owner John Orloski said the gas well was abandoned years ago, capped off and forgotten.

“He told me it's there,” said Orloski, “I don't know how he does it.”

“There's nothing there, it's all grass, but he claims it works,” said Orloski, who added he has no plans for the site where Stein claimed to find the well.

Stein said he's never made money with his dowsing ability. He's used it to help people find wells or the sources of springs or to find leaks.

Stein confesses he doesn't fully understand his ability. He's tried unsuccessfully to teach others how to dowse.

“I'm curious to meet someone else that can do this, I don't know if there is anybody around here,” he said.

Stein might want to put in a call to Nathan Platt, manager of operations of the American Society of Dowsers of Danville, Vt. an organization with 2,500 dowsers across the country and the world divided into 60 chapters.

“Dowsing is a very expansive practice,” said Platt, adding dowsers go beyond seeking water to search out mines, valuable minerals, wiring in walls and more. “We have dowsers who seek information, not material things. They seek lost objects, missing pets and people.”

“Dowsers use simple tools and interpret the responses of these tools to questions the dowser poses,” said Platt, himself a dowser.

How does dowsing work?

“I can tell you this,” said Platt. “You can ask 10 dowsers and get 10 answers back.

“There's empirical evidence that dowsers function best in a relaxed neural state that opens up the dowser to receiving subtle responses from the object of the search itself through his tools,” said Platt. “But this is not science, just evidence and the opinions of dowsers out there.”

Patrick Burkhart, a professor of geology at Slippery Rock University doesn't think even those opinions count for much.

“Anywhere you go in the ground, there's a reasonable chance that you are going to find ground water,” Burkhart said.

“I am not convinced that his success rate would be any better than a random exploration for water,” he said.

Dowsing has been around all through history and through all cultures said Platt. Perhaps dowsing is intrinsic to mankind like a sixth sense, he said, and the ability can be developed like riding a bike.

“I am a scientist,” said Burkhart. “I like things to be a little more systematic and based on observable physical phenomena.”