The Night Visitors Vampire Research Society cover art

The Night Visitors Vampire Research Society

The Night Visitors Vampire Research Society

By: James Cheney
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About this listen

They come uninvited. This is The Night Visitors, a paranormal podcast with James Cheney.

The Night Visitors explores encounters with vampires, supernatural folklore, and purportedly true stories of the creatures that visit in the night. Each episode presents a single account drawn from firsthand testimony, family histories, and witness reports collected from around the world.

James’s lifelong fascination with vampires and the supernatural led him through decades of research into vampire lore, psychic vampirism, and folkloric traditions spanning continents: the strigoii of Romania, the jiang shi of China, the soucouyant of Trinidad, the duppy spirits of Jamaica, the list goes on. That same fascination turned passion eventually pulled him from New England - a region with its own dark folklore - to Transylvania, where the locals still know what to do when the dead don't stay buried.

Especially drawn to vampires and all things vampiric, James looks to fill in the gap that formed following the death of Dr Stephen Kaplan, who during the 1970s and 80s ran the Vampire Research Center, conducting serious inquiry into vampirism. His work has since fallen into obscurity. Despite today's explosion of interest in the paranormal, nobody is doing what he did - until now. The Night Visitors Vampire Research Society is a space where people can share their experiences and be taken seriously.

Episodes draw on global vampire folklore and true supernatural accounts -Why did a rice farmer in the 1890s Guangdong survive a night trapped in a temple with a jiang shi? What protected a young woman in 1923 Honolulu from a curse sent across the Pacific? How does a guest in a Depression-era Québec boarding house never age and never eat? What do you do when a dishevelled stranger visits your night shift - and sleeps on a stone slab in the cemetery next door?

Firsthand accounts from around the world that examine vampires, ghosts, curses, spiritual attacks, and entities that exist at the edges of belief.

Our Sound

The Night Visitors theme music is "Haunted Haus" by composer Tim Kulig. We're grateful to Tim for allowing us to use his work to set the tone for each episode. https://timkulig.com/

Join the Community

The Night Visitors is part of a worldwide community exploring vampire culture, folklore, and the paranormal. James also publishes a weekly newsletter featuring articles on vampire lore, history, and how genuine folklore shows up in film and literature.

🌙 Website: thenightvisitors.com

🌙 Newsletter: thenightvisitors.substack.com

🌙 Facebook Group: bit.ly/night-visitors-fb-group

🌙 Instagram: @nightvisitorsvrs

🌙 YouTube: youtube.com/@TheNightVisitors

Share Your Story

Have you encountered something you believe was a vampire—psychic, folkloric, or otherwise? Email thenightvisitorsvrs@gmail.com. With your permission, your account may be featured on a future episode. Names and identifying details can be changed to protect your privacy.

James Cheney
Episodes
  • Beneath the Altar, Ming's Encounter with a Chinese Hopping Vampire, the Jiangshi
    Feb 17 2026

    In celebration of the Lunar New Year, our first episode explore's a Taoist legend!

    The Temple’s Jiangshi: Ming's Encounter with the Dreaded Hopping Chinese Vampire

    When Ming sought refuge in a rural temple during his journey to Hong Kong in the 1890s, he had no idea what lurked beneath the altar. That night changed everything he thought he knew about the supernatural.

    The creature that emerged was a Jiangshi, a Chinese vampire with hollow eyes, a green corpse-like body, and razor-sharp claws. Unlike the vampires you might picture, this one moved in slow, hopping motions (which sounds almost comical until you're the one being chased). Ming barely escaped by climbing a tree, where he watched the paralyzed creature until sunrise revealed its weakness.

    What kept this malevolent spirit trapped at the temple threshold? The villagers knew the answer. They'd been avoiding the place for generations, using it only during specific festivals. Turns out, jujube trees planted in the courtyard held the key to containing this undead Taoist priest from a century earlier.

    Through Taoist mystical symbols and other means, Ming helped free the temple from its haunting. Did you know that Chinese vampires inhabit sacred spaces while European vampires flee from them?

    Discover how Ming confronted the hopping terror and what makes Jiangshi so different from their Western counterparts.

    1. The Rice Farmer's Journey to Hong Kong
    2. Ming Encounters a Jiangshi in the Temple
    3. Destroying the Jiangshi Vampire

    You’ll find The Night Visitors podcast on a variety of platforms from Apple to ListenNotes to Pocketcasts and more.

    The Night Visitors Vampire Research Society is a worldwide community sharing firsthand vampire encounters and exploring the folklore, history, and pop culture of the undead.

    GET SOCIAL: Join the Facebook group or follow on Instagram @nightvisitorsvrs

    NEWSLETTER: Subscribe on your fav listening platform or subscribe to my Substack newsletter where you’ll receive each episode in your inbox weekly on Fridays.

    Share Your Experience - If you have any experiences you’d like to share or if you have any suggestions as to which aspects of vampirism you’d like to see explored in articles and YouTube videos email me directly at thenightvisitorsvrs@gmail.com. Please note that if you give us permission to share your stories of vampire encounters and would like to remain anonymous, we will change your name and any potential identifying details to protect your privacy. I look forward to hearing from you.

    Podcast Theme Music

    Title: “Haunted Haus”

    Artist: Tim Kulig (timkulig.com)

    Licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Show More Show Less
    10 mins
  • The Night Visitors Vampire Research Society: Examining Folklore as Memory, Not Fantasy
    Feb 14 2026

    What if the folklore our ancestors passed down wasn't entertainment—but historical testimony?

    Most paranormal content sensationalizes the unexplained. But what happens when we approach these stories with genuine curiosity and respect?

    James Cheney's "The Night Visitors" does something different. It explores documented accounts of vampiric entities across cultures and centuries—not the romanticized versions from pop culture, but the serious testimonies people have carried in silence.

    These aren't ghost stories. They're accounts of very real experiences: inexplicable energy drain, mysterious time loss, unexplained depletion of resources. Patterns that appear across different continents, different eras, different families.

    Here's what makes this approach worth paying attention to:

    The podcast treats folklore as historical memory—acknowledging that our ancestors documented what they observed, often with remarkable consistency. Rather than dismiss or sensationalize, it examines these patterns through both cultural context and skeptical inquiry.

    Listeners share firsthand accounts without dramatization. Family histories passed down through generations. Experiences people rarely discuss openly because they fear dismissal.

    The core message? If you've experienced something similar—that inexplicable nocturnal presence, the lingering exhaustion—you're not alone. And you're not losing your mind.

    In a world obsessed with definitive answers, there's value in respectfully exploring what we don't yet understand.

    Have you encountered perspectives on paranormal experiences that actually treated the subject with intellectual honesty? What made the difference in how it was presented?

    The first episode drops on Tuesday, February 17th in celebration of the Chinese New Year, then new episodes are released weekly on Fridays,

    Subscribe on your fav listening platform or subscribe to James' Substack where you'll receive each episode in your inbox each week.

    https://jamesnightvisitors.substack.com

    https://linktr.ee/thenightvisitors

    Music

    Title: "Haunted Haus"

    Artist: Tim Kulig (timkulig.com)

    Licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0

    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Show More Show Less
    4 mins
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