Just as it falls to humanity to stand against the dark, so to does it fall to us to bring the light.

I'm sorry to hear that your Valentines day plans will not work out the way you would have liked. Perhaps you can treat it like another day but with an emphasis on spending time with your friends? Save the romance and the plans until the opportunity comes up next, instead of pinning it all on an arbitrary calender date.

Romance is best when its a year round activity, in my humble opinion. I know I've missed opportunities in the past due to too much waiting.

For the record, I have encountered beings that seem to want to bestow positive emotions in those around them. They're called friends.

P.S. *Edit*

Did he say where he was going, exactly?

Sorry about my tangential thought—but, not completely. To feed is a strange verb, especially in our “profession.” It is almost used exclusively as a negative term—for vampires and the like. In humans, it transforms one thing into another. Generally, there is no endless supply. Even vampires can only drink so much before the victim is completely dry. If emotions can be treated as an energy that can be consumed—how does it work? How much of that energy do we have? What is the end result to the victim’s emotional state after an emotional vampire has fed?

Do you have any insights you would care to voice, GhostSpider?

Hannah—I won’t say I’m sorry your Valentine’s day dinner didn’t work out. It would be meaningless from a stranger such as me. I don’t have a significant other, so there would be no sincere commiseration on my part.

Yes there are Fey and other things that can drain some one to death or what might be worse. there are coma words with such victims you now the ones where the dr can find no reason for them to be in a coma

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about some research being done in this field.

Ah ha, I found it! A Professor Charlette Handler, in the 1960s, wanted to train spirits to provide positive emotions. Her background, ironically, was in mechanical engineering. She taught engineering at an ivy league school and held patents for a few new types of atomic reactors and other stocking stuffers. Her chemical battery design is the one still favored by psi-mechanics today. So in 1965, she publishes a paper about using empathic spirits in place of mood altering drugs for treatment of depression. Needless to say, she lost her job. After that, she simply vanished. No records mentioning her further exist.

My friend, do not dwell on Professor Handler. I know some colleges at my new university who worked with her at the time and kept in touch with her afterward. She tried her experiment. It failed. It simply does not work.

More to the point, I have been asked to take a trip to Libya soon. Perhaps my valentine is waiting for me there. We can hope.

It does—for the most part. Now, I have more questions that regard the energy that powers—enables?—our emotions. But I’ll save those for later.

Thanks.

Well said Cyber well said.

The psychic energy given off by emotions, is in part what powers a psychic's abilities to function. It is often when on the hunt, when emotions are on the rise that our powers begin to rise and peak. A lot of this is due to the subconscious responding, as most Psychics have not learned the difference between using their subconscious and using their emotions. If you can learn to use the real source, which is the mind beneath the mind, and learn that it's potential is far greater than most suspect, and how to truly develop it, emotion matters little.

It is, however, easier to generate the rise in psychic energy if using Emotions to fuel them and give them focus, intensity, color... power. This is what, I believe, most emotional or energy vampires feed off of. And many emotions have a specific type of energy, and thought/power behind them. Lust and temptation make you feel powerful in a way different from anger, or hate, or rage, but both can make you feel empowered.

I know that I have often experienced a sort of mental static, and being quite drained in mind, and sometimes body, after a pitched battle (some of which never involved a real physical component). I have felt my mind numbed, and buzzing for hours, usually with a headache, sometimes for days. Some of it is of course mental Backlash because I didn't finish certain techniques right, but the other part of it is a total burnout of psychic energy.

It is possible to use physical fuels sometimes to power psychic abilities, but its hard to even explain that one. I'm sure though, we've all experienced that drain after high emotions, good, or bad. Some of it is due to adrenaline, but adrenaline doesn't count for that "mind and soul" type of tired, or worn out.

So when psychics use up all their stores, and push beyond their normal limits, and they come down from all of that, and they experience headaches, fatigue, sometimes hemorrhages... there's at least some evidence to suggest that a creature that can drain more from you, against your will, could cause great harm, especially brain damage. But I think it could go deeper.

Being on the receiving end of something like this, I would imagine would inspire a very deep type of trauma... something that emotionally hurts, sure... but something on a spiritual level that seems to cut to the bone, something that makes you feel old, aged... weary and wary.

Maybe I'm rambling at this point, but I believe the threat could be very real. Even from someone or something that wanted to love you to death.