Compendium of Witches (Compendium Maleficarum)

alter the dispositions of one's own body that lack a natural coordination with the imagination, such as if someone were to add a palm's breadth to their height, and similar things.

Experience proves this daily in those sleepwalkers who do wondrous things in their sleep, which it is certain occur through the imagination while the senses are lulled.

Examples.

Book 1, Disquisition on Magic, chapter 3, question 3.

Martin Delrio relates that this occurred a few years ago in a college of religious men in Leon. There was a certain layman who used to teach children the rudiments of the Catechism during the day. These same thoughts returned to him while he was sleeping, such that in his dreams he would teach, exhort, and rebuke the children just as loudly and fervently as he was accustomed to do while awake. In this way, he disturbed the sleep of his neighbors. Another layman who was near to him had often warned him about this. One day, he jokingly threatened him that if he made these noises again, he would rise at night, go to his chamber, and beat him with a lash made of cords. What did Gundislaus (for that was his name) do? He rose around midnight while still asleep and, having left as he was lying, he immediately entered the room of his colleague. He held scissors in his hand and headed straight for the bed of the one who had made the threat. Behold the providence of God: the moon was shining and the night was clear without clouds, and that brother was awake. He saw him approaching and immediately threw himself from the bed on the side where the wall was slightly further away. The sleeper, close to the small bed, struck the mattress three or four times with the scissors and immediately returned to where he had come from. When morning came, he was questioned and denied that he remembered anything, nor had he ever even slightly intended to do such a thing. He had only thought, if the other were to approach him with a lash, how he would terrify him with scissors and drive him away.

Two companions were traveling together, heading toward their homeland. It happened that they arrived one day at a certain town where one of them had a friend with whom he stayed, while the other spent the night at an inn with an innkeeper, so that they might continue their journey together the following day. It happened that the innkeeper, while the traveler was sleeping, killed him out of a desire to take his money. After he had killed him, he reflected to himself on how he might secretly take the corpse outside the city to bury it. During that same night, the murdered man appeared in a vision to his companion who was sleeping and staying with his friend, saying: "Companion, companion, help me, because the innkeeper wants to kill me." After the space of a few hours, he appeared a second time, saying: "Ah, companion, you did not help me, and look, the cruel innkeeper has destroyed me." After another interval of time in that same night, he appeared a third time in his sleep, saying...