As I said to Striker on the other thread about SP , I am open-minded enough to see that there could be any number of possibilities what is behind the phenominon .

One theory of mine is that when we have SP we are breifly visiting hell , purgatory or some kind of weird afterlife different alltogether from religious ideas of where our souls end up .

The "presence" could be the gaurdian of this afterlife , an omnipotent being whose duty is to frighten and confuse the souls that enter his/her/its domain .

When we die our souls supposedly go somewhere , maybe the SP limbo is a place where they accidentally end up (lost souls?) , and the SP experience of living people is a flaw in the atomic structure of the universe that allows the souls of the living to travel there upon sleeping (the confusion in the universal mechanics arising from the fact that the brain activity during sleep is reminiscent of death) . But the souls cannot stay there , much as the Evil Presence would like us to , because they have a kind of ball and chain link to their living bodies and are pulled back eventually .

Note this is just a theory , I have given it a lot of thought , and I have others . The reason being , although I am willing to accept rational explanations for anything , the most rational explanation isn't always the most likely or satisfactory conclusion . I feel the scientific theory of SP has a certain something lacking , it's too simple and it leaves many questions unanswered .

Yikes!! Very interesting, but also a lil scary

Yes , I don't think I'd like to spend an eternity SPing either .... but maybe I'm completely wrong .
I'm just highlighting the fact that SP has been criminally ignored by scietific and paranormal investigators , and could be the missing link we've been looking for between our world and the afterlife . There seems to be something wholly more deep and meaningful in the experience than it simply being a strange disorder .

Before I'd heard of the SP explanation I really thought I was unique and was somehow releasing my soul from my body and having an OOBE , I also thought I may have been possessed . I tried explaning it to everyone I knew and they either thought I was cracking up or gave me an overly spiritual explanation (Y'know like they were just humouring me more than listening to what I was saying) .
It's not until I looked it up on the net that I found there's a name for it and that millions of other people get the same experience .
Before that I was awestruck by it , and now I'm starting to feel that way again as my skeptisism for the scientific explanation grows .

BTW - Night Mare : Your "Alien-Mantis" description ..... *Shivers* BRRRRRR !!!