Welding rods or coat hangers that show the ‘ley’ of the land

He’d posted decades of his drawings on a community website, numerous folk requested copies, so he shared some more on Roamer’s page.

His expansive artistic output includes cartoons, animations and sculptures, indoor and outdoor murals and soaring sunflowers adorning the Willis-family home, painted for his beloved wife Angela who sadly died in 2018.

He also created numerous stage sets, backcloths, paintings and drawings, from the start of his BBC career as a technical operator in London in 1958 til after he retired as a TV producer/director in Belfast in 1988.

And ‘tween-times he was a film sound recordist, instigator and organiser of Ulster Hospital Radio, presenter of the TV show ‘Ye Tell Me That’ and producer of the children’s TV series ‘Why Don’t You?’, essential childhood viewing back then.

He only mentioned to me in passing his interest in Ley Lines and last weekend, with characteristic gusto, he organised a full-scale demonstration involving a dozen ‘assistants’ and spectators.

Brian’s theory is that Ley Lines “have always been a part of our planet, like the earth’s magnetic field” and today, and next Saturday, I’ll try to describe what happened at the demonstration.

I can’t say specifically where it happened “to preserve the important archaeological site” he insisted, so I’ll refer to it as “an earthworks on the North Coast”!

When I arrived, puffed by the steep hill, Brian’s aides and guests were mingling around a well-stocked picnic table beside an old stone barn. The adjacent large, circular, grassed area, bound by two concentric circular mounds - manmade, ancient and mysterious - was the ‘earthworks’.

“So off we go then,” Brian announced, holding in each of his hands an ‘L’ shaped metal rod, parallel and pointing forwards. He proceeded to walk slowly around the inner circular mound, accompanied by Jake Patterson and 15-year-old Joe Gormley.

With a pencil, Jake plotted Brian’s progress on a scale-plan of the earthworks. The plan showed the old stone wall peeping from the mound, gorse bushes and undulations (notches) in the earthworks. It also showed the positions of plastic marker-cones that Joe had placed around the edge of the grassy circle “just to give us a guide, a visual marker” Jake explained.

Everything was organised with military precision - til Brian’s two rods swung over each other, quite dynamically, forming a cross. This happened a number of times though Brian didn’t comment and Jake didn’t mark anything on the plan.

“Water,” Jake explained, “he’s getting a lot of water.”

Like water diviners in days of yore, Brian’s dousing rods detected moisture, but he was seeking Ley Lines. Then he exclaimed “something’s happening now!”

“There we are!” Jake confirmed, marking the plan.

Suddenly, simultaneously and seemingly unassisted, both rods in Brian’s hands surged sideways - from parallel and pointing forwards to pointing sideways, due left and right of Brian. Undeniably startled I asked him “did you do that?”

“I put nothing into that movement,” Brian stressed.

“I’ve read a lot about this,” he added, “and one of the theories is ‘involuntary muscle movement’ because something must be moving these rods. It’s not magnetism, so it’s me, but I don’t know I’m doing it.”

I wondered if something in the dousing rods caused it!

“They’re welding rods,” Brian explained “anyone can make them with coat hangers. They’ve got to be metal of some sort but Sharon’s dad (Sharon and her sister Gerda prepared the picnic) used to do it with hazel sticks.”

Brian began walking forwards again, with Jake counting “one, two, three, four, five” and marking the plan with five points where the rods sprang sideways.

“Energy of some sort,” Brian commented, “they’re swinging out and I’m doing nothing with my hands, except they’re shaky with old age! And then the rods go back to normal. Normal is parallel. They swing out for Ley Lines, and in for water.”

The water is natural dampness in the ground which “you can see time and again when I’m walking around”, Brian explained.

Does he feel any specific sensation in his hands when the rods swing? “None at all,” he stressed, laughing, “especially me, because I’m a diabetic and my hands are numb. OK everybody, so we’ve done the circle once. We’re going to do it again but nearer the middle.”

Read what happened, and why, here next Saturday.