MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - I need to find a stud

Yeah, I'm lobbing softballs tonight.

But seriously...

I need to screw my flimsy-ass Ikea furniture into the walls, so my kids don't pull it down and kill themselves. The problem is that my walls are plaster and lathe, originally built circa 1900. I'm considering hiring Sylvia Browne, or maybe getting a dowsing rod to find a fucking stud, because nothing else has worked.

I've tried a stud finder, which allegedly has a "deep scan" mode for thick walls, but it doesn't find squat for me. I've looked for nails in the baseboard, but none are visible. There's an electrical outlet to the left of where I need to be. I can't see inside well enough to tell how the box is mounted, but rapping on the wall to the left of the box sounds different, so I'm reasonably sure there's a stud there. I measured 16 inches from there, drilled a test hole, and got nothing. So now I'm not sure what to try. Are there any other standard spacings that would have been used at the turn of the last century I could try? Or am I stuck punching holes in my wall at random until I get lucky?