Hello Markham Cousins, and Friends: As I said this morning, we had a wonderful time on Friday July 16th. in the mountains of Botetourt County, just off Middle Creek at the John Markham Cemetery. It is rewarding to spend time thinking of ones heritage, and doing something to preserve the memory of that heritage. In the process of locating the graves at The John Markham Cemetery, we used "Witching Sticks", made of "steel coat hangers" that were straightened out, and the last six inches bent 90 degrees to form a handle. With these "Witching Sticks", we were able to locate graves in the cemetery that were long forgotten, and at least 100 years old. The strange part of all of this was the way that the "Witching Sticks" reacted over the graves. Over the Graves with Male Persons the sticks would open up and point out to the sides of the person carrying them at a 90 degree angle to the direction of travel. Over the Graves with Female Persons the sticks would cross directly in front of the person carrying them and go all the way to pointing in an outwardly direction. This Phenomena was tried over graves of known persons with the results being the same each time it was tried. My first reaction when I was doing the "Witching" was that of a Divine intervention, but when I came to my senses, I thought there must be some scientific explanation. I would like to know the reason for this difference, and would like for someone who knows about this practice to explain to me what is the cause of this reaction. If no one can be found, would someone who has assess to a person of higher learning, preferable in the scientific community, try to get an explanation, and pass it along. For those skeptics, I would suggest that you try this yourself, maybe you can come up with the answer. Please let me hear from you. Tommy