Astrologer, psychologist, and dowser Johannes George Mieremet (left) conducts research at the request of Mayor Van Fenema of Zandvoort into a possible link between earth rays and serious illnesses, Zandvoort, October 27, 1948
Photo Ben van Meerendonk / AHF, IISG collection, Amsterdam
After the Second World War, Mr. Van Fenema became Mayor of Zandvoort in 1948. He soon noticed that he quickly became tired and developed headaches while sitting at his desk in the town hall. Other people in the town hall also complained of fatigue and headaches. After consulting with the aldermen, the mayor commissioned the well-known dowser and astrologer Johannes George Mieremet to investigate the town hall. Mieremet (1885-1967) revealed that the complainants were sitting exactly on intersections of earth rays and advised the installation of ‘radiation protection boxes’, a device for which he held a patent and sold under the name ‘Poverni’. The boxes were installed and the complaints disappeared. Mieremet’s success prompted the mayor to propose further research to the municipal executive. He wanted to have hospitals and schools in his municipality investigated for earth rays.
Zandvoort was not the only place defending itself against the pernicious influence of earth rays. The ‘earth ray sentiment’ prevailed in other locations as well, and radiation protection equipment appeared in all kinds of buildings. For instance, the board of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw also called upon Mieremet because several staff members did not feel fit. In this temple of the arts, the dowser ‘discovered’ earth rays, which he then successfully combated. Mieremet’s earth ray boxes or other protection equipment appeared in government buildings, ranging from primary schools to the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences. When the education inspectorate refused a Catholic school in Twente permission to purchase a protection box, Minister Cals intervened, and the school received the box it desired. The archives of the Association against Quackery had contained a box from a competing firm for over fifty years, which was offered to the Zandvoorts Museum in 2026.
The physician Fortuin once opened one of Mieremet’s protection boxes (priced at fl 125.-), which was strictly forbidden: at the bottom of the flat wooden box, there were merely eight glued-in rods, 7 cm long and 0.5 cm thick.
Meanwhile, science and politics struggled with the paranormal sector, and research and advisory committees succeeded one another. In 1950, a working group led by Dr. J. Clay conducted research into the connection between earth rays and physiological processes. Mieremet cooperated, and the committee visited, among other places, the crypt in the Frisian village of Wieuwerd, where powerful earth rays were said to have led to the well-known mummification of the corpses present there. The committee measured no radiation of any kind, and its conclusions were scathing.
In 1952, the ‘Working Group for Agricultural Research into the Dowsing Problem’ published that the indications provided by dowsers for the most suitable locations for stables and livestock, or for the best growth sites for crops, had ‘no practical value whatsoever’. In the year 2026, there are still people who believe in the existence of earth rays. In 2026, author Vrouwkje Tuinman published a fictionalized crime novel, De straaljager, centered around the figure of Mieremet.