FAMILY FUELED Alex Savage, center, stays juiced for the daily grind by collaborating with other psy vamps in her home.

Alex Savage used to drink human blood.

“That was before blood was tested for HIV/AIDS,” Savage says. “I just didn’t care.” But in 1996, she gave up her poison and walked away from the macabre underground in New Orleans and became a psychic vampire instead.

“While sanguinarians get life-force energy from blood, [pyschic vampires] glean it through contact feeding,” Savage explains. “Talk therapy, meditation and by physically pulling from energy hubs, or chakras.”

Savage, 36, now lives on a tree-lined street in West Rogers Park with her vampire-enthusiast husband, Chad Savage, 39; their five-year-old daughter, Ripley; and Bishop, a black Labrador who wears a skull-and-crossbones collar. (Ripley was named after Sigourney Weaver’s character in the Alien series; Bishop was named for a character who saves Weaver’s life.)

Alex’s interests here aren’t just a lark. When she was 25, Alex says she discovered a hereditary need to feed from other people’s energy to maintain her health. Four years ago she founded House Nepenthe—Greek for a drink that vanquishes evil—to bring 11 other psy vamps together monthly in her home, where they exchange energy and explore how to protect their “fragile boundaries.” Members, ages 19 to 40, have jobs in tech, computers and other fields high in electronic energy.

“We’re a metaphysical group looking for knowledge…so we can be better people in the world,” Alex says. “It’s not something we’re proud of; it’s very hurtful, exhaustive.” Some suffer chronic fatigue or, like Alex, survived cancer; some get sick from wristwatches, cell phones or light, she says.

“Most of these people have an extra gate in their head,” Chad asserts. As  physical proof, he cites  the gaping holes that appear in photos of their auras taken by Kirlians—cameras for the supernatural that will be on display at the first annual Chicago Ghost Conference this weekend, in Congress Plaza Hotel’s purportedly haunted Florentine Ballroom (Chad’s paranormal-themed artwork will be there, as well).

A professional makeup artist, Alex dyes her hair deep ebony with white streaks, while Chad runs a darker-edged graphic and web-design business (see sinistervisions.com). They met in 1990 at an Anne Rice convention. “Psy vamps recognize each other through their auras,” Alex explains, recalling that Chad’s “shined like a beacon.”

The couple—whose home is more “vintage Martha Stewart than Marilyn Manson,” Alex says, with candle-lit pumpkins stacked in the fireplace—wants to educate people about modern vampirism. Alex loves garlic, for instance. “I use it in everything,” she says. 

The family has little patience for the popular conceptions of vampires: “Those old metaphors were made by illiterate medieval peasants,” Chad says. “They didn’t know how else to describe people feeding off of one another’s energy other than to say they were sucking blood.”

The Chicago Ghost Convention is Friday 26 to Sunday 28. For details, visit chicagohauntings.com.