What, pray tell, is an energy vampire?

When I have heard this term, it refered to electronic equipment that still draws power evern when it is turned off, for example your Television, your VCR, or your cell phone charger.
If you were not refering to electronic equipment, but rather people, perhaps a constant complainer would fit here. They can sap all the joy and excitement out of a project.

I’ve heard this term as a descriptor for people who “drain the life out of you.”

Basically, people who are huge downers all the time.

I’m sure there’s some funky hocus pocus new age definition for the term, but I’m just going by what I heard.

@filmfann : I’m talking about people. I’m writing in response to this question.

Yes, basically what @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard said. :-)

The ‘high maintainance’ emotional types, drama rama all the time!

The kind of person that will complain about their job, relationship, for YEARS, but never take ACTION to change anything!

Gah…break out the wooden stakes and garlic wreaths. lol

Energy vampires can be categorized in the terms above but not always. These people are annoying yes, but they don’t necessarily deplete the life force from others. On the other question I posted a link to a whole study done on energy vampires and there is a lot online explaining the phenomenon.

These are basically people who don’t have a magnetic energy field like everyone else does. All living things produce their own energy and we need it to live and be sustained. When we are sick our fields are depleted. With psi vamps/energy vamps they can’t make their own so they relay of feeding off of other’s energy waves. Some do it purposefully and others aren’t aware they are doing it and in some cases those are worst because they can’t control themselves.
A symptom of being around one is that you’re always irritable or have low energy. I’ve lived with and have been in contact with energy vampires and they weren’t the complaining type. They were quiet and reserved, almost inconspicuous. Happiness and sexual energy are the things that are the most plentiful for them. When a person is happy they are overflowing with energy and those are the prime targets. Here is the article again: Energy Vampires.

People that constantly kvetch about the same things over and over and over again, but don’t take any advice on how to fix, or solve or at least make their problems less of a problem definitely suck the “mental” energy out of me.

So do bores, simply by my act of listening to them.

The term usually refers to a person in a relationship who is all take and no give.

I vant to suck your ohms!

You wouldn’t be sucking ohms. You would be sucking Amps or Volts.

@filmfann . . . Take your fancy vords and begone Shaman! I vill deal vith you in due time.

now, vere are those ohms?

Edit
Don’t rely too much on the definitions given by the OVC (online vampire community)
’‘Energy vampires’’ are people who flourish and revel in situations that leave others ’‘drained’’, exhausted and tired. An attention whore who feels at their peak when given attention. Giving attention to someone is hard work, especially when you’re played into giving it to them through their manipulation, usually on an emotional level. I’ve dealt with a person like this, no fun.
They may also be people who get off on strife and quarrel, and ’‘feed’’ from it. People who feel at their best when certain elements are met and triggered. Drama, for one. It can totally vary from so many things. It isn’t people just standing there, draining your energy, or sucking out your happiness because they’re all dark, moody and complicated. Things have to be set in motion. Either they do their best to trigger it, or wait for the moment to happen. That’s why I don’t buy the whole vampire thing. I’m sure psychology would agree that it’s a fairly common situation which appears in many different every day scenarios. Do not pinpoint these people as vampires, or something to be feared. As they are everywhere and can be anyone.
Your bus driver might be one, when he sees the frustration, exhaustion and despair on your face as you drop the last of your change into the change box. He sees you need money, and he feels power by having you spend the rest of what you have. Your day was shot to shit, his was made better. Bad example, but aye, things like that.
Somehow, this type of thing has been relegated to one dumbass definition, probably due to people needing closure and justification on the issue, once they realize the things they ’‘do’’.
I suppose it isn’t all bad though. I read a very interesting article on emotional vampires, or energy vampires if you will, (lookin for it, will post it if I can find it, but that was like five years ago) about poor self esteem, fear, shyness or confusion. Mooching energy from others helps them. Fucked up world man, the game ain’t straight it seems. Apparently, a lot of this is never done on purpose, and comes as natural to the person as flowing water.

But a lot of people, if not everyone, gets a sense of strength and power from different things. For example, a lot of people feel energetic, happy and healthy during a thunderstorm, or during rain, intense heat, Winter, night time, while watching movies, while having sex, talking with a good friend, talking with a stranger, whatever you want. Emotional/energy vampires, I imagine, experience the same thing through what they do, some social situation that gets their brain juices running.

People who suck all the juice out of you with their needs.

An energy vampire is someone who hangs around you…and when you are with them, you start to feel lower in energy. They may have a chaotic life,high maintenance temperament or insist on “me me me me me” all the time so that when they leave it’s as if you have run a marathon and you need to go lie down and or have a stiff drink. :) Perhaps they are perpetually depressed and/or on drugs. The main thing is that they like to hang around you because you make them feel good but there is no reciprocal energy..i.e. they come and hang out and leave feeling fantastic…meanwhile you are left totally wiped out. It’s not a conscious thing, usually. It’s just that someone has not dealt with “their stuff” and come and dump it on you.

If you have never met anyone like that….count yourself very, very, blessed.

@Blondesjon Resistance is futile- but tasty!

An “energy vampire” is a person you blame for your own unhappy feelings.

What @koanhead ^^^^ Said!

They’re called vampires because consciously or not, they prey on others, and get good at baiting and various other tactics which succeed in wasting a lot of other people’s energy. You may be technically correct that it would be theoretically possible for the victims not to allow it, and so they are giving away their energy, but that is an academic argument. Most people are not organized to resist the skilled manipulation, drama, baiting, etc.

Energy vampires sound like a load of crap to me. No one can “take your energy”, and they aren’t some supernatural beings. In fact all vampires are crap. Just fantasy people too bored with their lives wish were real.

I lived with a guy who said he was a vampire. He always made this nerdy deal about how he barely liked his steaks cooked, worked nights, claimed he didn’t like the sun, and also liked to suck on any cut his girlfriend got. He was an idiot in a fantasy land. Mind you, he also claimed he killed someone once and drank his blood, so he’s also either a liar or a psycho. Maybe both.

@cockswain : Thank you.

@cockswain You can’t say they don’t exist simply because of the terminology used. Another term for psychic vampires is psionic leech or parasite. This is basically what they are, it’s a term. They aren’t being labeled as actual creatures of the night as the folklore would have one assume.

Yes a person’s energy can be taken away. When you are depleted whether from food, or activity, your energy levels are lowered. All people have an energy field, magnetic field. All living creatures have them. It just seems that there are people that have a parasitic nature that allows them to leech off another’s energy. It’s like those people that seem to get a high off of pissing a person off. When a person is angry they produce extra energy, a person can tell when there is negative energy around, and I’m not just talking metaphysically. You can sense when a person is in a foul mood and in some cases it can affect your mood. A psychic vampire basically not only feels this but feed off of the energy because their supply is low. Just like anemics used to crave blood and in some cases used to drink it way back when.

@Ajulutsikael It may seem that way to you, but I say this:

Your “life force”, inasmuch as such a thing can be said to exist, is your own, intrinsic to you. It cannot be taken from you, only given by your leave.

Is it your position that people can somehow interfere with the electromagnetic fields of others without external equipment?

If you aren’t just talking metaphysically, then what is ‘negative energy?’

A blood sucking athlete, you know….Flo Jo! ;¬}

Bottom line, we may choose who we wish to associate with, and if the ‘energy’ doesn’t feel good, we can choose to not keep company with that person.

This is not to be confused with lending support to people we care about during times of crisis, but, big dif. between that and someone who is chronically negative or stuck in a perpetual place of victimhood, looking to use others as a platform for their ongoing misery.

It is also about balance, and while no relationship is going to be perfectly 50/50 at all times, one notices when the balance is so far off that it becomes unhealthy.

It IS perfectly okay to tell someone..” Ya know, I can’t listen to this anymore.”

An energy vampire is one with a ton of glitter.