Kolchak: The Night Stalker is een Amerikaanse serie van de zender ABC. De serie ging in première in 1974.
Kolchak was originally two made-for-TV movies that aired in the early 70's, and featured the adventures of Carl Kolchak, a down-on-the heels reporter who ran afoul of a vampire in Las Vegas and an alchemist in Seattle. These movies proved popular enough that they were spun off into a series, which placed Kolchak in Chicago with the Independent News Service. Each week for 20 weeks he investigated various supernatural and supranatural creatures, ranging from aliens to vampires to Aztec sacrificial cults. Although it only lasted one season on ABC, Kolchak has remained a cult favorite and been kept alive through the efforts of creator Jeffrey Grant Rice, Mark Dawidziak, and the folks at Moonstone Comics, who have two Kolchak comics going (see Links). There's an anthology of Kolchak stories coming out this year and discussion of a new Night Stalker (2005) series produced by The X-Files's Frank Spotnitz for ABC.
A series of apparently unrelated deaths involve each victim being crushed to death, and covered in wet, slimy Spanish Moss. Upon investigation, Kolchak discovers that each victim was related to Paul Langois, a hot-tempered Cajun. However, Langois has an iron-clad alibi: he's been the subject of a sleep experiment and been kept asleep for several weeks. Eventual, Carl realizes that somehow Langois' sleep state has caused him to manifest a subconscious ""boogey-man"" from the Cajun bayou: Peremalfait, a huge creature covered in Spanish Moss that crushes the life right out of you. Peremalfait ""kills"" Langois to prevent him from being woken up, and Kolchak must travel into the sewers of Chicago to kill Peremalfait with the only thing that can destroy it: a spear made out of bayou gum wood.