The Name It And Claim It Game Helene Hadsell Pdf
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At age 18, she left home for Vancouver, Washington, where she found employment as a file clerk in a shipping yard.[5] She met and married Pat Hadsell, who was from Denton Texas, during World War II.[3]
The couple later settled in Grand Prairie, Texas, and they had three children.[3][6][7] She was a homemaker who was also president of the Grand Prairie Community Chorus, a Girl Scout leader, and on the board of her local PTA.[8] In 1958, she entered the Mrs. America Pageant and made it past the first round,[8] before losing in the Fort Worth division finals.[9]
In 1959, the family moved from Grand Prairie to Irving, Texas.[10] She became the society news editor for the Irving News-Record,[11] which became the "Strictly Personal" column for the Irving News Texan.[12] After having been named to a supermarket magazine advisory board, a local paper described Hadsell as "an enterprising girl if ever there was one."[13]
In Hadsell's era, there was an activity known as "contesting", in which people would dedicate their time and efforts towards winning sweepstakes, where winners are chosen at random among those who have entered and the usual strategy was to submit as many entries as possible, and consumer skill contests, in which prizes were won by submitting some kind of writing extolling a particular product, often "In 25 words or less".[14][7] Such enthusiasts were known as "contestors" or "contest bugs".[7] There were national magazines and newsletters with contesters as the targeted audience.[7]
The Hadsells started entering contests in 1948, as a family hobby, focusing on the skill contests.[7] In 1949 she won a Toni Home Permanent Kit as a 48th-through-168th place prize in a contest run by Skillern's Departmental Drug Stores.[15] However, for the first ten years or so, they almost never won.[7]
By 1957, the family was starting to win contests more frequently, including the Hadsells' six-year-old son winning some toy guns for naming a pony.[16] In 1959, Hadsell told a local newspaper columnist that she had just won an electric food mixer for coming up with a name for a new kind of cake, and that she had won two other mixers in contests during the preceding year.[17]
In 1963, Hadsell was selected as president of a Dallas area writing and contesting club, known as the Competriots, many of whose forty members were published writers of fiction, poetry, or textbooks who were now focusing on contests.[18] The members traded contest information and entry blanks.[7]
By early 1964, the family said they had won many prizes, ranging from the mundane such as lawn-mower blade sharpeners to a trip to Disneyland;[7] the latter was followed by trips to Washington, D.C., and Venice.[19] Nonetheless, Hadsell thought that they hadn't yet "won any of the big prizes, like cars or trips around the world."[7]
Around two years after she won the house, Hadsell began to change her focus. In late 1967, Hadsell sponsored a seminar in Dallas on mind control.[24] In 1968 she was part of a lecture series in Dallas on subjects related to psychic abilities and mental potential; her topic was the power of positive thinking.[25] By 1970 she was editor of the Mind Control Newsletter and had attended a conference on parapsychology in France.[26] In early 1972 she said that she had entered no national contests at all the two years prior, saying "I've gone into so many more meaningful and exciting experiences."[27] Her lecture appearances grew to the point where they took place throughout the Midwest.[27]
In 1971, she authored the book The Name It and Claim It Game: with WINeuvers for WISHcraft, which gave some of her hints for how to win contests, and also delved into her philosophy of "believe you can win and you will".[23] It was published by DeVorss & Company, an established California publisher known for its focus on New Thought topics.[28] As of 1982, the book was on its seventh printing.[14]
By 1972, Hadsell had established a relationship with Jos Silva and his Silva Mind Control approach, and some of her talks then and in years to follow were sponsored by the Silva organization.[29][30] Hadsell received training in the approach from Silva's Institute of Psychorientology in Laredo, Texas,[31] and subsequently did teaching there.[30] In 1980, she was the contact point for Silva's seminars in the Dallas area.[32]
The cover of her 1971 book read under her name, "The Woman Who Wins Every Contest She Enters".[36] This claim was repeated, in one form or another, in newspaper profiles about Hadsell during the 1970s.[6][33][31] But as a 1982 Orlando Sentinel story on contesting pointed out in reference to Hadsell's claims, in reality even those who were good at winning contests did not win every time.[14]She claimed to have developed telepathic communication with members for her family, especially her son Chris.[6] She stated that the same projection of energy which she called "auric energy", also helped facilitate telepathy.[31] In 1973 she taught a class which covered telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychic healing at Tarrant County Junior College.[35]
Hadsell lectured and conducted workshops throughout the United States and Canada. Some Dallas-area colleges hosted her lectures. Among the topics discussed: ESP and self awareness and positive thinking.[33] She said that everyone had at least some powers of ESP and clairvoyance, if they were recognized and developed.[37]
Hadsell self-published two books during the 2000s, both dealing with her spiritual beliefs and episodes from her life, and also self-published a novella. In 2007 a short humorous poem of hers, "Where's Grandma?", appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.[38]
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