I've been doing research on how witchcraft and the supernatural were perceived and treated in the late Middle Ages and very early Renaissance, but almost everything I find is from Germany and England. I was wondering how big of an issue this was at the time and if it was an issue anywhere else, specifically in Europe but also globally.
I actually took a class on this subject in college. The answer is complicated and it really seems to depend on the region. More specifically, in Northern Italy (Fruli if I remember correctly) there was a belief in a group known as the Benandanti who as spirits left their body at night and went out and fought witches to protect the harvest. At first they were tolerated/dismissed by the church. Overtime, however, with the rise of witchcraft fear in other regions they church began to treat the issue much more seriously. Also cited in that book, however, is an example from Swabia where a man sees a ghost of his neighbor who tells him to be more virtuous if he wants to get to heaven. For talking about this story the man was put to death for witchcraft and heresy. Hope that helps. That's as much as I really remember from two years ago and I don't want to start speculating.
Source: The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Carlo Ginzburg