[2] Stalking the Night Fantastic was designed by Richard Tucholka, Chris Beiting, and Robert Sadler, and published by Tri-Tac in 1983 as a square-bound 104-page book[1] The following year, Tri-tac published a second edition that was ring-bound,[1] as well as two supplements, Module 1: Hellsnight and Module 2: Haunts.

In the July 1984 edition of Dragon (Issue 87), Jerry Epperson felt the strongest part of Stalking the Night Fantastic was the list of encounters, which "run the entire gauntlet from African Witch Doctors and Aliens to Purple Monsters and Shapeless Disgusting Things."

"[2] In his 1990 book The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, game critic Rick Swan was not impressed, writing, "Investigating the supernatural is a great idea for an RPG, as evidenced by Call of Cthulhu and Beyond the Supernatural, but you wouldn't know it from Stalking the Night Fantastic, which is neither scary nor particularly exciting."

Swan thought the character generation system was far too complicated, noting that several of the 14 attribute such as Dexterity and Agility, were redundant.

Swan was also not pleased with the two combat systems, one for players and the other for non-player characters, pointing out that "The results are wildly inconsistent; a wounded NPC, for instance, may continue to function without any ill effects, but a wounded PC may suffer shattered bones and spurting arteries."