A psychic vampire is a creature in

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

said to feed off the " life force" of other living creatures. The term can also be used to describe a person who gets increased energy around other people, but leaves those other people exhausted or "drained" of energy.A Vampire's Life? It's Really Draining
Forget 'Twilight.' These Folks Pale in Comparison to the Stereotype. By Monica Hesse, Staff Writer, ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', November 24, 2008, Page C01 Psychic vampires are represented in the occult beliefs of various cultures and in fiction.

Psychic energy

Terms used to describe the substance or essence that psychic vampires take or receive from others include: ''

energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

'', '' qi'' (or ''ch'i''), ''life force'', ''

prana In yoga, Ayurveda, and Indian martial arts, prana (, ; the Sanskrit word for breath, " life force", or "vital principle") permeates reality on all levels including inanimate objects. In Hindu literature, prāṇa is sometimes described as origin ...

'', and ''vitality''. There is no scientific or medical evidence supporting the existence of the bodily or psychic energy they allegedly drain.

Emotional vampires

American author Albert Bernstein uses the phrase "emotional vampire" for people with various

personality disorder Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental health conditions characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the culture. ...

s who are often considered to drain

emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...

al energy from others.

Energy vampires

The term "energy vampire" is also used metaphorically to refer to people whose influence leaves a person feeling exhausted, unfocused, and depressed, without ascribing the phenomenon to psychic interference.Watch out for energy vampires
by Dr. Judith Orloff, ''

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

'', March 11, 2008

Dion Fortune Dion Fortune (born Violet Mary Firth, 6 December 1890 – 6 or 8 January 1946) was a British occultist, ceremonial magician, and writer. She was a co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, an occult organisation that promoted philoso ...

wrote of psychic parasitism in relation to vampirism as early as 1930 in her book, ''Psychic Self-Defense''. Fortune considered psychic vampirism a combination of

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that a ...

and

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

pathology, and distinguished between what she considered to be true psychic vampirism and mental conditions that produce similar symptoms. For the latter, she named

folie à deux ''Folie à deux'' (), also called shared psychosis Berrios, G. E., and I. S. Marková. 2015. "Shared Pathologies. Pp. 3–15 in ''Troublesome disguises: Managing challenging Disorders in Psychiatry'' (2nd ed.), edited by D. Bhugra and G. Malhi. ...

and similar phenomena. The term "psychic vampire" was popularized in the 1960s by Anton LaVey and his

Church of Satan The Church of Satan (CoS) is a religious organization dedicated to the religion of LaVeyan Satanism, Satanism as defined by Anton Szandor LaVey. Founded in San Francisco in 1966, by Anton LaVey, LaVey, it is considered the "oldest satanic reli ...

. LaVey wrote on the topic in his book, ''

The Satanic Bible ''The Satanic Bible'' is a collection of essays, observations, and rituals published by Anton LaVey in 1969. It is the central religious text of LaVeyan Satanism, and is considered the foundation of its philosophy and dogma. It has been descr ...

'', and claimed to have coined the term. LaVey used ''psychic vampire'' to mean a spiritually or emotionally weak person who drains vital energy from other people.

Adam Parfrey Adam Parfrey (April 12, 1957 – May 10, 2018) was an American journalist, editor, and the publisher of Feral House books, whose work in all three capacities frequently centered on unusual, extreme, or "forbidden" topics. A 2010 ''Seattle Weekl ...

likewise attributed the term to LaVey in an introduction to '' The Devil's Notebook''. The English singer-songwriter

Peter Hammill Peter Joseph Andrew Hammill (born 5 November 1948) is an English musician and recording artist. He was a founder member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Best known as a singer-songwriter, he also plays guitar and piano and ...

credits his erstwhile

Van der Graaf Generator Van der Graaf Generator are an English progressive rock band, formed in 1967 in Manchester by singer-songwriters Peter Hammill and Judge Smith, Chris Judge Smith. They were the first act signed by Charisma Records. They did not experience much ...

colleague, violinist Graham Smith, with coining the term "energy vampires" in the 1970s in order to describe intrusive, over-zealous fans. Hammill included a song of the same name on his 1978 album ''

The Future Now ''The Future Now'' is the seventh studio album by Peter Hammill, released on Charisma Records in 1978. It was the first solo album Hammill released following the 1978 breakup of his band Van der Graaf Generator, although he had released numerous ...

''. In the 1982 horror movie ''

One Dark Night ''One Dark Night'' (also known as ''Entity Force'') is a 1982 American supernatural horror film directed by Tom McLoughlin, and starring Meg Tilly, E. G. Daily, and Adam West. It follows three teenagers sent to a mausoleum for the night as p ...

'', Karl “Raymar” Raymarseivich is the name of a Russian psychic vampire who gains power from the lifeforce of young victims by frightening them to death. This is done by demonstrations of

telekinesis Telekinesis () (alternatively called psychokinesis) is a purported psychic ability allowing an individual to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Experiments to prove the existence of telekinesis have historically been cri ...

which emanates as visible electrical currents of

bioenergy Bioenergy is a type of renewable energy that is derived from plants and animal waste. The Biomass (energy), biomass that is used as input materials consists of recently living (but now dead) organisms, mainly plants. Thus, Fossil fuel, fossil fu ...

. How he dies is unclear, but his malevolence posthumously remains in his body. Effectively, Raymar is a

poltergeist In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist ( or ; ; or ) is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of polter ...

in the mausoleum he is interred in, opening crypts (including his own), sliding out the caskets to the floor and randomly exhuming his fellow corpses to terrify unfortunate teenagers who have chosen the wrong place to have an overnight initiation. The terms "energy vampire" and "psychic vampire" have been used as synonyms in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union as part of an occult revival. The 2019 American comedy horror television series ''

What We Do in the Shadows ''What We Do in the Shadows'' is a 2014 New Zealand mockumentary comedy horror film written and directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi and the first installment in the ''What We Do in the Shadows'' franchise. The film also stars Cleme ...

'' includes the character Colin Robinson, a metaphorical and literal "energy vampire" who drains people's life forces by being boring or frustrating.

Vampire subculture

Sociologists such as Mark Benecke and A. Asbjørn JønA. Asbjorn Jon, 'The Psychic Vampire and Vampyre Subculture', in
Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies
', 12 (2002), pp. 143–148 (p.145) have identified a subculture of people who present themselves as vampires. Jon has noted that enthusiasts of the vampire subculture emulate traditional psychic vampires in that they describe 'prey ngupon life-force or 'pranic' energy'. Prominent figures in the subculture include Michelle Belanger, a self-described psychic vampire, who wrote a book titled ''The Psychic Vampire Codex: A Manual of Magick and Energy Work,'' published in 2004 by

Weiser Books Red Wheel/Weiser, also known in different periods in its history as RedWheel/Weiser/Conari and Samuel Weiser, Inc., is a book publisher with three imprint (trade name), imprints: Red Wheel, Weiser Books and Conari Books. It is America's second-l ...

. Belanger details a vampiric approach to energy work which she believes psychic vampires can use to heal others, representing an attempt to disassociate the psychic vampire subculture from negative connotations of vampirism.

Sexual vampires

A related mythological creature is a

sexual vampire A sexual vampire practiced esoteric Taoist sexual practices, Daoist sexual techniques where one partner purportedly strengthened their own body by absorbing the other partner's ("Energy (esotericism), life force") and ("sexual energy") without e ...

, which is supposed to feed off sexual energy. Sexual vampires include

succubi A succubus () is a female demon who is described in various folklore as appearing in the dreams of male humans in order to seduce them. Repeated interactions between a succubus and a man will lead to sexual activity, a bond forming between them, ...

incubi An Incubus () is a male demon in human form in folklore that seeks to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women; the corresponding spirit in female form is called a succubus. Parallels exist in many cultures. In medieval Europe, union with ...

References

External links

Energy Vampires(Band): Energy Vampires

Llewellyn (Bookstore): Psychic Vampires
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080427223904/http://www.llewellyn.com/bookstore/article.php?id=379 , date=2008-04-27
Article on Identifying Energy Vampires In Our Life By Divya Toshniwal
Church of Satan Magical terminology Psychics Vampires Vampirism Vitalism