Father Herbert Thurston, SJ was educated at Stonyhurst and London University. He entered the Society of Jesus and was master of Beaumont College from 1880 to 1887. Thurston was ordained in 1890. Thurston wrote more than 150 articles for the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-1914) and published nearly 800 articles in magazines and scholarly journals. Father Thurston joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1919 and became an expert on spiritualism, writing several books on the subject.