Yes. It all should be compared with other psychological fads. How about the “alien abduction” tales that got Harvard psychiatrist John Mack in hot water a couple of decades ago? Never before the era of Science Fiction were there all these specific tales of being abducted to alien space ships.....
Though of course there may be many mysteries through millennia from visions, seizures, dreams, etc. but I don’t think people were having all the specific “recollections” of being abducted and probed by space aliens until there was a body of Sci Fi works and movies to draw upon in recent decades.