[4][5] 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.
[11] The English singer-songwriter Peter Hammill credits his erstwhile Van der Graaf Generator colleague, violinist Graham Smith, with coining the term "energy vampires" in the 1970s in order to describe intrusive, over-zealous fans.
[12] In the 1982 horror movie One Dark Night, 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.
Effectively, Raymar is a poltergeist 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.
[13] The 2019 American comedy horror television series What We Do in the Shadows includes the character Colin Robinson, a metaphorical and literal "energy vampire" who drains people's life forces by being boring or frustrating.