It says it on the back of their t-shirts.
"Pursuing explanations for the unexplained."
It's their motto, and it probably best describes what they do as a team.
Tom Cockerill, Mark Jarrell and Amy Looney make up the team known as Appalachian Paranormal Explorations (or APEX), a Washington C.H.-based paranormal investigations team that formed last May and has since gained some notoriety for what they do.
"We're not trying to get the next big television show," said Cockerill, the group's founder. "We treat it like it would be our regular job. But it's not."
Cockerill has been fascinated with the paranormal since growing up in a rural Fayette County home that had its share of strange goings on.
"I grew up in a very old house on land that is less than a mile from Indian burial grounds in Fayette County," he said. "When I was a kid, it scared me to death."
A few years back Cockerill and Jarrell joined forces as part of a different paranormal investigation team whose members eventually ended up going their separate ways.
Last spring Cockerill, who currently is a full-time student at Wilmington College, decided that he missed doing the investigations and made the choice to found APEX. The next step for him was to seek out team members.
"The first person I thought to ask was Mark," he said.
The two joined forces and later added a third member who has since been replaced with current member, Amy Looney, a Greenfield-native who started with the group in December.
"We kind of operate like a non-profit," Cockerill said. "People can contact us and we don't charge anybody. We do accept donations, though, to help us off-set some of our costs."
In the last year APEX has conducted a variety of investigations ranging from private family homes that are experiencing unexplained phenomena to well-known haunted places like Bobby Mackey's Music World in Wilder, Ky., and Prospect Place Mansion in Dresden, Ohio.
"There are a lot of places I'm unsure about that I'd love to investigate," said Cockerill. "Some places you have to go through a lot of red tape. Some places I'd be willing to try to go through that red tape."
They have yet to explore any of Fayette County's historical landmarks - not that they wouldn't love to investigate some of them - but they have experienced plenty of paranormal activity around the area in private homes.
"Even though ghost hunting is more popular than ever, it's still taboo," Cockerill said, noting that most families who ask for their help prefer to remain anonymous. "We don't put anything out there unless they're OK with it."
Cockerill said that it's also important to note that they don't always find something at places they investigate.
"A lot of people think it's awful funny when you always seem to find something," he said. "We have had investigations where we didn't find anything. We try not to put something out there where we say 100 percent 'this is what it is.' We prefer to say, 'we believe this is what it is.'"
Cockerill said he considers himself the believer of the group while Jarrell is the resident skeptic and Looney is somewhere in between.
"I love it when we can't debunk evidence we have found and knowing that there is more out there than meets the eye," said Looney. "I may not find the answers I am looking for, but I am finding out fast that there are a lot of things in this world that are just unexplainable."
In the near future APEX will be opening up one of its investigations to anyone who wants to see what they do.
On April 21 the team will travel to Hillview Manor in New Castle, Pa., for an investigation. People who wish to join them can for a fee of $75 each, which does not include transportation or lodgings.
APEX can be contacted through their Web site at www.apexinvestigativeteam.com or through the team's Facebook page at facebook.com/apexinvestigativeteam.
Though they find that more and more people they meet have at least some interest in the paranormal, the APEX members said there's nothing like the experience of a investigation.
"It's kind of like an extreme sport," said Jarrell. "It's that kind of rush."
via recordherald.com
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