Spooktacular Tour of One Step Beyond

Join us for a tour of "One Step Beyond: Fortune-Telling and the Paranormal." As the exhibition is located post-security in Terminal 2, visitors must obtain an SFO Gate Explorer Pass and abide by TSA rules. Please bring your vailid Passport or REAL ID to go through the TSA check point.

Please meet at the Aviation Museum & Library for a introduction to SFO Museum. We will then travel via AirTrain to Terminal 2. We will go through the TSA checkpoint at Terminal 2.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

For centuries, people have turned to fortune-telling to predict the future, employing a variety of tools. Tarot cards appeared in Europe in the 1400s, but it was not until the late 1700s in France that people first used them for divination. The legendary French fortune teller and cartomancer Madame Lenormand (1772–1843) predicted the futures of many eminent figures in Paris. In New York City, the infamous Madam Morrow (active 1850s–70s) began advertising her psychic abilities in local newspapers in 1854. By the late 1800s, cartomancy, palmistry, and tea leaf reading flourished as public fascination with the occult grew. Enterprising manufacturers quickly capitalized, offering a variety of esoteric implements and publications. Alongside fortune-telling, the paranormal attracted serious scientific scrutiny. Reports of spirit communication, hypnosis, and telepathy proliferated. Scientists and skeptics fiercely debated these occurrences. Could these phenomena reveal aspects of human consciousness that science had yet to uncover? Whether viewed as genuine abilities or pseudoscience, the debate endures. The items on view in One Step Beyond reflect our continuing desire to glimpse what lies ahead.

Special thank you to David Brandon Hodge for contributing historical excerpts from Supernatural Machines: The History of Spirit Communication Devices (2026) and reviewing the labels, and to all the other lenders who made this exhibition possible: Cavallini & Co. Archives; Brian D. Coleman; Justin Coote; Joe Welch American Antique Museum; Brandie Knight; Mickey McGowan, Unknown Museum Archives; Eugene Orlando/Museum of Talking Boards; Henry S. Rosenthal Family Collection; and John Kozik, Salem Witch Board Museum.