with night, do you use on or in?

a thief in the night
things that go bump in the night
on a night like this
on this night of all nights

on the night in question

It should be obvious from the examples above, all of which are very common locutions, that the use of the prepositions on or in with the word night can depend on context. There are also cases where on is optional:

on the night we met
the night we met

So... what's the rule? Near as I can figure, the question is whether night is a physical thing that wraps around you, hides you, or engulfs you; or a simple point in time, like a date on a calendar. So on a night like this isn't so different from saying on Wednesday or on the third. Meanwhile, if night is used with in, it's not so different from using the word dark:

The evil crept up on us in the night.
The evil crept up on us in the dark.

There's an implication that the evil arrived cloaked in a fog or a miasma.

This is a minor point of language, but it occurred to me only the other day.

This Cambridge reference has a different take:

In or on?

We use in with morning, afternoon, evening and night, but we use on when we talk about a specific morning, afternoon, etc., or when we describe the part of the day.

The reference agrees with my intuition about on, but it implies that in is something like the generic default mode otherwise.