Robert Thurston Hopkins (1884-1958) was a prolific author. He wrote topographical works, books on the English countryside, ghost stories and more, including biographical works on Oscar Wilde, H G Wells and Rudyard Kipling.
Hopkins was a ghost hunter known for his books on ghosts. He described his experiences in his book Adventures with Phantoms (1946). He claimed to have encountered the ghost of a hanged man in a woodland near Burwash on two occasions in the 1930s.
His son was Godfrey Thurston Hopkins (1913–2014), known as Thurston, a well-known Picture Post photojournalist.