Sleep paralysis or something else?

Ive only had sleep paralysis once but it was honestly one of the two weirdest situations of my life. The other being a sleep paralysis type of experience as a child except without the paralysis..
in my typical sp experience, i was sleeping in my room about two years ago.. my sleep was disturbed by the sound of someone walking up my stairs. it startled me awake but i was unable to move at all. I managed to open my eyes and see that i was in my room but i was facing the wrong direction to see the stairs. then i either managed to move my head slightly or perhaps my 'astral self' turned its head because i could see at the top of the stairs a very large hooded figure with no face other than blackness. it walked closer to me and said "why are you sleeping like that?" the fear was overwhelming but somehow i knew it could not harm me and i mumbled "please leave me alone" before drifting back into normal sleep. a large part of the next day went by before i even remembered what had happened that night.
i am baffled by what happens during sp.. in my example above i find it curious that i could hear the entity coming up the stairs before i woke up. surely a non-physical entity would not make these sounds. the logical arguement would be that these things are a kind of projected dream but it seems strange that everyone experiences similar events and visuals.

for interests sake, i will also mention my other related paranormal experience. this took place when i was much younger, five or six. i woke up one night and decided to leave my room for a drink of water. all the lights were off but it was not completely dark so i didnt turn any on. as i turned out of my room into the corridor i saw the most terrifying thing in my life. there was a short shadow sillouette walking towards me. it had a stretched neck that was tied in knot and light shined out from a hole in the knot. this experience makes me think that perhaps sp experiences arnt dreams. i believe as children we can all see and percieve certain potentially paranormal things that are later ignored by our brain as we are tought that they are not rational. perhaps waking in sp puts the brain in almost a childlike state where it does not apply a filter based on what is accepted to be normal - where we percieve more than just the stone cold physical world.

Originally posted by mr-lizard
Has anybody come to the conclusion that it could be BOTH?

A natural biological phenomena AND a paranormal experience?

For instance those hormones that paralyse our bodies and induce the 'hallucinations' might actually be paralysing our bodies but chemically altering our perception so we see things that we wouldn't normally be able to see?

I suffer from SP and i have had various degrees of dreams/hallucinations/visions whatever you want to call it.

BUT sometimes they have seemed TOO real - not just some abstract creation of my mind, but genuine feelings of touch and audible/visual experiences.

Absolutely. How else can drugs affect the mind, something seemingly different from the body it is housed from? IMO the mind straddles 2 dimensions, the physical and the spiritual, whereas the body can only reside in the physical. The body limits the mind, unless somehow you can break free from its perpetual prison.