Your TV, cable box, even your microwave may all look like average appliances, but there may be something more sinister at work. When they sink their fangs into your walls, these vampires may be eating up to 10% of your electric bill.

Even when they're off, these appliances are gobbling up precious energy. A DVD player can use up to 75% as much power when it's off as when it's on. A stereo uses up to 90% and a desktop computer can suck down 35 watts in standby mode.

We put these stats to the test in a local home with energy expert, Frank Molander of Applied Proactive Technologies in Springfield. Molander, inspecting the home's cable box, had this to say, "The cable TV box is turned off, no power that's operating the box right now. If I'm looking down here at my watt meter, measuring the amount of electricity that's coming out of the wall and into the product, that's 27 watts right now, even with the cable box turned off."

The television was using only 2 watts, "But if you start looking at the number of TVs that are in your home, the number of cable converter boxes and you begin to think that this is power that's being used twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year, that's where it begins to add up," Molander said.

There are ways to keep these vampires from sucking you dry. One is to plug your appliances into a power strip like this that you can turn off between use. Another is to look for the ENGERY STAR symbol. "You could look for that ENGERY STAR logo and when you see that you're going to know that the product that you're purchasing is doing the best that it can to not draw that phantom load when it's in the off position," said Molander.

Most of the newer products we tested lacked the fangs of their older energy-thirsty brothers. The family's Nintendo Game Cube wasn't drawing any energy. Neither was their cell phone charger.

Bottom line - throw out the garlic, crosses and wooden stakes and fight these vampires by plugging your appliances into a power strip that you can then turn off between uses, buying energy star products designed to be efficient and sticking to newer products, many of which are already energy efficient.

It may make your electric bill a little less scary.