Imagination
Dreams, reveries, chimeras, instances of panic, superstitions, prejudices, marvelous or extraordinary occurrences, castles in Spain, happiness, fame, and stories of spirits and ghosts, sorcerers and devils, are all products of the imagination... . Torquemada relates that a husband was going to a masked ball disguised as a devil. He decided to make love to his wife while dressed in this manner. She gave birth to a monster with the face of a demon... . But such phenomena are generally exaggerations. Monstrous fetuses are variously looked upon as having the shape of a dog, a pig, a hare, etc... . even though they have no definite shape. A man as ugly as Aesop was able to have handsome children because he constantly set beautiful paintings before his wife.
Incubuses
Lewd, lecherous demons that bother women and girls. Servius Tullius, a Roman king, was the offspring of a beautiful slave and Vulvan, according to some authors; according to other of the cabbalists, however, he was fathered by a salamander; and according to demonographers, he was the offspring of an incubus... . A Scottish girl was impregnated by the devil. Her parents asked her who had made her pregnant, and she replied that the devil slept with her every night, in the shape of a handsome youth. The parents slipped into her room by night ... and saw beside her a horrible monster. The priest was called in to expel the monster, but as he escaped, he made a frightful noise, burned the furniture in the room, and carried away the roof of the house. Three days later the girl gave birth to a monster, the vilest one imaginable, and the midwives strangled it to death.