Bill Northern

Animal Communicator & Dowser

News Article

Many thanks to the Ashburton Guardian for this copy.

Bill Northern has two great passions - dowsing and teaching people how to take better care of their horses. Over the past decade or so Bill has developed a unique ability to communicate with animals in a way that most of us can only dream of. He spoke to Richard Worrall about his life and the positive impact he has had on other people’s lives through his talents.

A quest to find the source of a blocked toilet may not sound like the origin of a life-changing experience to most people but it was for Bill Northern.

The retired American businessman’s foray into sanitation plumbing began his remarkable journey into the world of dowsing, the ancient art of water divining, and equine consulting - communicating with horses to identify health problems. He is one of the best known dowsers and horse communicators in the United States, having appeared frequently on television.

I was trying to unblock a toilet and was having no luck so I contacted the local council to find out where the sewer line connected to the sewer main. The engineer brought down plans and we dug down where it was supposed to be but it wasn’t and an electronic detector didn’t work either. As a last resort he brought out some divining rods. I picked them up and they turned downwards and there was the pipe. I was so excited that they had worked for me.

His curiosity ignited, Bill was quickly down to the local library to pore over any books he could find on dowsing and soon after he was heading off to the national Dowsers convention held in Vermont near the Canadian border. There he attended a dowser school where he learned from a Canadian Indian, Doug Grey.

Bill divines water, tackles negative electromagnetic fields, sorts out horse ailments and has even been known to cure the ills of exotic zoo animals and says his success rate in all these areas is very high. However despite his success the white-bearded, cowboy-hat-wearing retiree is neither brash nor boastful about his unusual talents.

I just like being able to see animals live that might otherwise die. We put a lot of animals down that don’t have to be put down.

He is similarly down to earth when it comes to explaining how dowsing works.

It is basically to do with our bodies, electromagnetic fields and appealing to a higher being for something. It might be asking for water in a particular place at a certain volume that is potable. There is certainly a spiritual dimension but it is not especially religious. You are acting as conduit through which these things happen.

The lack of hard science behind dowsing doesn’t worry Bill, who draws an analogy with the relationship many of us have with much of the modern technology used everyday.

I use computers but I do not understand how they work but that doesn’t stop me using them.

Bill has helped a number of Mid Canterbury farmers find water on their properties, mostly through teaching others the art of dowsing.

If someone is going to spend $100,000 to drill a well I would rather they search themselves as there is not a 100 per cent success rate. I would not like to tell a farmer to drill a well in a certain place and for them to spend all that money only to find out that it didn’t work.

This may also explain why he opts where possible to try to divert a nearby aquifer to the nearest bore.

Seventy to 80 per cent of the time you can find another stream and shift it to the nearest well, he says.

Bill has taught up to 50 people in New Zealand and the United States how to become dowsers, a process that involves two to three hours of initial training, although he stresses it is up to the individual to practice to hone their skills.

I relate it to playing the piano. We can show people all the notes, teach them scales and even some tunes but at the end of the day it is up to them if they choose to practice or not.

When his divining rods are not searching for water, chances are they could be locating and moving positive and negative energy fields derived from the electromagnetic fields circling the earth.

To illustrate the point Bill tells me about a negative energy field that used to run through the Guardian offices. He moved out into the alleyway the last time he spoke to a journalist about eight years ago so it wouldn’t cause any more problems. Bill invites me outside to find it for myself using his L shaped rods. Sure enough, holding the rods lightly in my hands I start walking towards the building and suddenly, as predicted, the two rods cross over each other, indicating the location of the energy field.

Moving negative energy fields is not something Bill does often but in extreme cases he has been called in to help. One such occasion was the boutique Christchurch hotel - Hotel off the Square.

The hotel was struggling to get people to stay and they were not sure why. They called me in and I discovered that there was a negative energy field coming from the office of the late John Britten.

Bill managed to move the energy field away from the hotel but had to call on the services of an exorcist to lay the spirit to rest.

The impact was almost immediate. Within a day the hotel’s occupancy rate had jumped to 50 per cent and by the end of the week was virtually full.

Finding water and dealing with pesky electromagnetic fields is, however, not what occupies most of his time. His first love and passion is horses. This is where equine consulting comes in - a skill he also learned through dowsing.

You can use the same senses to talk to animals, although not many people can do this, perhaps just eight out of 100.

Bill is quick to point out he is not a horse whisperer he has a more direct approach to finding cures for all manner of equine ailments he talks to horses, asking them what is troubling them and they tell him.

Over a period of about 20 minutes, for which he charges $70, Bill will ask the horse a series of questions that could relate to where it is feeling pain, if the saddle or bridle is fitted correctly and even if they have a problem with the jockey who rides them.

I just close my physical eyes and listen and hold a pendulum. If the pendulum rotates in a clockwise direction after I ask a question the answer is yes and anticlockwise means no.

Delving into the psyche of horses requires a particular technique of questioning which he likens to talking to small children.

You need to talk to them as you would a four-year-old child.

Now before you start thinking Bill has watched Dr Doolittle once too often, there are plenty of credible horse breeders and trainers in Canterbury who have taken advantage of his talents and swear by them.

One such trainer is Dromore’s Lester Morris.

Lester learned how to communicate with horses from Bill five years ago and swears by the skills he has picked up.

It has certainly helped my business. I have more winners as my horses are healthier because they are happier.

Lester says initially he was skeptical and can understand why some people would find it hard to take seriously.

A lot of people do not believe you and it is a hard thing to believe. If you had asked me about this 10 years ago I would have told you it was a load of crap, but now I am doing it myself. I must have had the ability but it was Bill who showed me that I did. He is amazing.

Bill hasn’t confined himself to horses either, having at various times helped reform car-chasing dogs and even worked with exotic animals at Orana Park. Bill prefers to work face to face with animals but can also help animals remotely, provided he has their name and address.

I can sit in a room, close my eyes and look at an animal anywhere in the world to assess it.

However, this can be very mentally draining, so much so that Bill would not attempt any more than one such remote consultation every day.

Dowsing is very widespread, with many indigenous peoples having some form of dowsing in their cultures, according to Bill, although he says the practice is not that well known, with only about 10 per cent of the population likely to be aware of its existence.

From the point of view of the practitioner this may not be such a bad thing as dowsing and dowsers have by all accounts not always had what you might call good press.

During the Middle Ages many people suspected of being dowsers or caught practicing dowsing were rounded up and killed for practicing what was viewed as a form of witchcraft. This is despite the fact that Moses, not a noted devil worshipper, was a dowser.

People are generally less hostile in the modern world, with New Zealanders generally being more open-minded than some people in the United States, although Bill says lingering suspicions remain in the minds of some convinced dowsing is little more than the work of the devil.

Opinion across the various churches is divided. Baptists accept it readily whereas when I go to my Methodist church back in Warsaw (Virginia), the pew I sit in is always the last to fill up. They prefer not to be close to me.

Bill suspects the hostility amongst some churches and clergy stemmed from a fear that their power was being undermined.

Some people see it as a threat.

Threat or no threat, with plenty of people on both sides of the Pacific willing to vouch for the good Bill Northern has brought into their lives and those of their animals, his rods and his animal insights are likely to continue to be keenly sought after for a good while yet.

Bill Taking to a Horse

Ashburton Guardian Article

Date: 23/01/06