THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING
PART SIX - DREAMS AND DOODLEBUGS

Chapter 15  -  Extra-Sensory Perception

In Hydetown, Pennsylvania, in 1864, a man named Kepler had a vivid dream. In this dream he was wandering through the woods accompanied by a young townslady with a reputation as an accomplished flirt. Kepler suddenly meticed the figure of an Indian some distance away, with a bow bent and ready shoot him with an arrow. Kepler's girl companion quickly produced a gun from somewhere and handed it to him. When Kepler shot at the savage, the lndian disappeared. On the spot where the Indian had stood a river of petroleum gushed forth. Sometime later Kepler visited his brother on the Hyde and Egbert farm for the first time, where his brother had recently taken the position of superintendent or farm manager. On the Hyde and Egbert farm Kepler saw the very scene of his dreams and marked the spot where the Indian had stood . The Kepler brothers managed to acquire an oil and gas lease and drilled a weIl on the selected spot where the dream Indian had vanished when fired upon. The weil was named "Coquette" in honor of the lady of the dream and it came in flowing 1,500 barrels per day. Kepler's drearn netted hirn 160,000 the first six months.

A Methodist revivalist conducting a camp meeting in the 1870s preaehed the doctrine that petroleum was stored away in the earth to be used on that inevitable dreadful day of doom to destroy the world with fire. In the same period another minister of the gospel used his best persuasive powers to get the legislature of an oil state to prohibit further drilling because oil was used to light the fires of Hell, which might go out if it continued to brought to the surfaee and used for worldly purposes. The politicians, perhaps in deference to their own future welfare, let the unholy waste continue.

One early homespun philosopher argued that as the earth was a huge animal, the water was its blood, the rocks its bones, the grass and trees its hair, the hills pimples on its face, Aetna and Vesuvius just eruptive boils; that oil would naturally be secured by boring through the skin into the blubber of the immense animal. Shades of Moby Dick! 

In 1859 the lumber firm of Brewer, Watson and Company had helped to promote and finance the Drake weIl. The Watson of that firm was Jonathan Watson. Somehow it seems appropriate that Jonathan Watson should turn out to have been the first big-time wildcatter. On the very day that oil was found ln the Drake weIl, Watson was a few miles down Oil Creek securing an oil lease on a farmer's three hundred acres. In 1871 the local newspaper dubbed Jonathan Watson as the "Champion oil operator." During the first dozen years of the oil industry he had become interested in over two thousand producing oil wells, the majority of which he had drilled personally. Watson owned the finest residence in Titusville, whose conservatory alone had cost $50,000. He had in excess of a million dollar cash reserve in the bank.

Watson's oil weIl locations were made by every means known to man and a few sanctioned only by lunatics. His wife was a spiritualistic medium and he occaionally humored her by allowing her to use one of her contacts in the spirit world to decide on the proper weIl location. His wife's picks or perheps we should say the picks of his wife's friends turned out to be excellent oil producers. That was good enough for Watson and he hired other mediums to make locations. Everything went weIl with Watson until he left the mediums and went over to employing experts with the divining rod. Peach-fork locations inevitably came in as dry holes so Watson turned his back on the doodlebugs with disgust and went back to the spirits. These spirits must have been angry at Watson's shift of faith because they too now started to give him advice that resulted in a long string of dry holes. Watson lost his cash reserve, he lost his big house and his conservatory; he became a minor figure in the oil game.

The town of Pleasantville, just across the Venango County line from Titusville, also had a hard-working petroleum spiritualist named Abram James. James was taking a leisurely buggy ride down a country road with two companions when his spirit-guide forced him out of the carriage, across a fence and toward the north end of a farmer's field. Once arrived at the north end of said field, James was thrown violently to the ground, where he made a mark with his finger and forced a penny some inches into the ground. For a long time he lay face-down on the earth, still and apparently lifeless. When his two companions hurried over to where he lay they found him with his eyes closed and his pulse feeble.

When he revived, James interpreted all these manifestations as a sign that petroleum existed in large quantities at the spot where the ghost had tripped him. The weIl drilled at that location came in making a hundred barrels a day. Abram Jones became known as the "boss locator" and for a time he did a nice business exciting his partner-ghost to make other weIl locations in Venango County. James made the mistake of trying to apply his art to other counties. In Elk, Warren and Forest Counties, away from his home-base. the spirit-guide was unhappy and did his wrestling act only with reluctance. His out-of-county picks were invariably dry holes.

As far back as Guy Findlay could remember, he used to "have a feeling" every time he approached a spring of running water, a feeling which he learned to associate with underground water. He assumed that when he had that feeling, wherever he was, there was water underneath. He thought "everybody could do it." Sometime after his tenth birthday it finally dawned on Guy Findley that he had an extraordinary power and he told his father all about it. His father owned a ranch near Sanderson, Texas, in a dry belt in which water was extremely hard to locate. Guy found a place on the Sanderson Ranch where he said water would be found at the depth of sixty feet. His father had the spot drilled and obtained water at sixty-two feet.

The news spread Iike wildfire. A man named Stickler paid Guy's father five hundred dollars and expenses to let Guy look for water on his spread of acreage near DeI Rio, Texas. Guy Findley made three widely scattered locations and at all three Iocations wells were drilied and water was found. Five hundred dollars became the standard fee for Guy's services in locating water. When Guy was thirteen years of age, several newspapers wrote feature articles about his exploits. One of them nicknamed him, "the boy with the X-Ray eyes.“

The year was 1901 and the fabulous Spindletop oilfield had just been found near Beaumont, Texas. Uvalde, Texas, was the closest town to Guy Findley's farm home. Some wealthy men organized the Uvalde Oil Company and obtained an oil and gas lease three hundred feet wide and approximately a mile long near production on Spindletop. These promoters now proceeded to test if the X-Ray eyes would detect oil as weIl as water. On a farm near Uvalde they proceeded to bury a barrel of water and a barrel of petroleum, each six feet underground. That night Guy Findley was taken to the farm in question, where he was able to tell them where the barrel of water was buried and also where the barrel of oil was buried. Guy was promptly transported to Beaumont and told to see if there was petroleum anywhere under the narrow strip of leased land. Guy's older brother was an attorney and he represented Guy and Guy's interests in the dealings with the Uvalde Oil Company. Guy Findley's brother told the oil company officials that their narrow strip of land contained oil and hat Guy would acquaint thern with the proper location for drilling as soon as the legal papers, protecting Guy's interests, were signed. A misunderstanding of some kind arose and the papers were never signed. The oil company made a location at one end of the narrow strip; as fortune would have it Guy's location was at the other end of the leasehold. The Uvalde Oil company drilled a dry hole on their location. Years later Guy Findley's locationn was drilled for a producer but by that time the lease had long ago changed hands. Guy Findley grew up to be graduated from Uvalde High School and to attend Southwestern University in nearby Georgetown.

The Gulf Oil Corporation drilled a dry hole on the farm of a certain large property owner in Louisiana. Later an oilfield was discovered a few miles to the north near property belonging to this same farmer. The Gulf land department sent a representative to talk to the farmer about a lease on the north property. This Louisianan refused to execuce a lease on this new land unless and until Gulf agreed to drill another location on the old lease, a Iocation which the farmer would make for Gulf. When all argument failed to shake the farmer from this stipulation, Gulf reluctantly agreed. The second location on the old lease which the farmer now made was near an old tree, where a spiritualist friend of the farmer had assured him that oil would be found. This second well on the old lease came in as a 500 barrel weIl but all the offsets were failures. One-well fields are a rare phenomenon but this was a one-well field.

Some thirty years ago in northeastern Indiana, a traveling salesman dreamed a vivid dream. On the basis of this dream he was convinced that an oilfield would be found between two nearby dry holes. The dry holes had been drilled many years previously and it was generally believed that the two w'ells had condemned the territory. This salesman must have been a good salesman. At first they laughed at him but gradually he began to attract investors in his idea. When his group of amateurs had sufficient money raised to drill a test weIl, the drill was started digging smack-dab between the two dry holes and discovered a respectable oilfield that rewarded these adventurers handsomely for a period of over twenty years.