A girl, seventeen years of age, was used to fall into a kind of sleep in the afternoon, in which it was supposed, from her expression of countenance and her gestures, that she was engaged in dreams that interested her. (She was then in light trance-sleep, initiatory trance.) After some days she began to speak when in this state. Then if those present addressed remarks to her, she replied very sensibly, but then fell back into her dream discourse, which turned principally upon religious and moral topics, and was directed to warn her friends how a female should live—Christianly, well governed, and so as to incur no reproach. When she sang, which often happened, she heard herself accompanied by an imaginary violin or piano, and would take up and continue the accompaniment upon an instrument herself. She sewed, did knitting, and the like. She imagined, on one occasion, that she wrote a letter upon a napkin, which she folded for the post. Upon waking, she had not the slightest recollection of any thing that had passed. After a few months she recovered.
The following case is from the Hamburgh _Zeitschrift für die gesammte Medicin_, 1848:—
A lad of eleven years of age, at school at Tarbes, was surprised several mornings running at finding himself dressed in bed, though he had undressed himself overnight. Then on the 3d of May he was seen by a neighbour, soon after three in the morning, to go out dressed with his cloak and hat on. She called to him, but he did not answer; and she concluded that he was going to Bagnères with his father. In fact that was the road he took; and he was afterwards seen by several persons near Bagnères, trudging after a carriage. It rained hard; and they were surprised to see so young a lad travelling at so early an hour; but they thought he probably belonged to the people in the carriage. He reached Bagnères at half past five, having done the distance of five post leagues in two hours and a quarter. He went to the hotel of M. Lafargue, which he had on a former occasion visited with his father, and entered the eating-room. The people of the hotel addressed him. He told them that he had come with his father in a post-chaise, and that they would find his father in the yard busied with the carriage. M. Lafargue went out to look for him. In the mean time the people of the house observed that the boy’s remarks were incoherent; so they took off his cloak and cap, when they found that his eyelids were closed, and that he was fast asleep. They led him towards the stove, took off his wet things and his boots without awakening him; but before they had completely undressed him to put him to bed he awoke. The impressions of his dream did not desert him. He complained of having had a bad night; and asked for his father. They told him his father had been obliged to set off again immediately. They put him to bed, and he slept. They sent intelligence to his father, who came to Bagnères. The boy believed, and believes still, that he came to Bagnères with his father in a chaise that was driven very slowly. Being asked what he had seen on the road, he described having passed a number of monks and priests in procession. He said there was one good-looking young man who did not leave him, but was always saying, “Good day, Joseph; Adieu, Joseph.” He said that what had most annoyed him was the burning heat of the sun, which was so intense that he had been obliged to wrap himself up in his cloak; that he could not bear its bright light.