Feeling is believing.

Whether or not it’s actually possible is neither here nor there for those who truly believe they’ve been abducted by aliens — because their post-traumatic stress disorder is real, according to a new study.

Researchers at Zaragoza University in Spain concluded that almost half of believers may qualify for PTSD diagnoses. Out of 19 people claiming to have been taken by aliens, nine of them met the criteria for PTSD — a rate of 47%. Compare that to people were kidnapped by other humans, 46% of whom (about 15 people) could be considered PTSD sufferers.

Their findings suggest that symptoms of trauma can occur, even if the traumatizing event did not (which is probably exactly what they — the aliens — want us to think).

“The emotional reaction to memories of an implausible experience can be similar to an individual’s response to a genuinely traumatic event,” researchers wrote in their report, which was recently published in the journal Explore. “Abductees can have an emotional reaction analogous to PTSD because, regardless of whether their recollections are true or false, their fear is real.”

Alleged alien abduction victims involved in the research recalled a range of experiences during their encounters, from being mesmerized by “strange” lights to finding themselves aboard a spaceship and in the company of otherworldly lifeforms. Some also remembered tell-tale radio and television interference during the event, or meeting a “bedroom visitor.”

More than half of the participants claimed to have memory loss during their supernatural ordeal, usually between a few hours of the night and, for one individual, about 36 hours.

On average, researchers also found that alien abductees scored lower in “suggestibility” compared to the control group, indicating that they had actually become more of a skeptic as a result of their abduction.

The small-scale study — understandably — involved just 19 people who claimed to be bona fide alien abductees and compared them to 32 individuals who had been kidnapped but not by extraterrestrials. Volunteers were asked to complete a PTSD assessment questionnaire that rated the severity of the symptoms, such as frequent nightmares, anxiety, mood swings, intrusive thoughts about their experience and full-blown flashbacks.

Notably, three alleged abductees did not consider their phenomenal experience traumatic.

Researchers also hypothesized a few alternative explanations for purported alien abductions, including hallucinatory dreaming and sleep paralysis or the effects of anesthesia during a legitimate surgical procedure.

Alien abduction claims are nothing new, of course. In 1991, paranormal investigators and sociologists commissioned a nationwide poll of nearly 6,000 Americans and found at least 119 respondents whose answers were indicative of alien abductions. Based on the survey, it was extrapolated that nearly 4 million people in the US have endured an alien abduction.

And such experiences aren’t limited to regular folk. Even celebrities — the likes of Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Dan Aykroyd and Shirley MacLaine among them — have shared stories of their own alien close encounters.