MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
When Your Eyes Deceive You (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What stories illustrate how our eyes can deceive us?
Today, I'm going to tell you two stories that highlight how the world around us, and even our own eyes, can play tricks on us. Sometimes what people see is not what's really going on at all. But once people have convinced themselves of something, it can be very hard for them to change their minds. And as you'll see today, sometimes that can lead people into deadly situations.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do.
So if that's of interest to you, please offer to, for free, beautifully detail the Follow Buttons car. But instead of doing that, once you have their car, just bring it to a huge cliff, put the car in neutral, and push it off. Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called Her Smile. Around 1.30 p.m.
on the afternoon of May 18th, 2007, a 57-year-old woman named Yvonne de Hoord arrived at a park in Rotterdam, which is a city in the Netherlands. She was there to meet up with her friend, and she had to cut through the park to get to his house. Yvonne went to her friend's house almost every day. And usually when she walked through the park during the week, there weren't that many people around.
But on this day, it was really crowded because it was the Friday of a long weekend and there was just a lot of families and visitors that were enjoying the spring weather. Which meant the playground, the pathways, and the park's little cafe were all packed. But Yvonne didn't pay that much attention to the crowds because she was busy thinking about her friend.
They'd known each other for years, and they had what she considered to be a very special connection that Yvonne didn't think she had with anybody else. Now, Yvonne knew that a lot of people might say her and her friend's relationship was sort of more strange than special. In fact, some people in her life actually openly disapproved of it.
But for Yvonne, it seemed like the main reason for that was, you know, Yvonne was generally pretty friendly and social and sort of an outgoing, normal person. But her friend was extremely reclusive and never left his house. And so it just seemed like an odd pairing. Her friend was originally from Germany, but even though he'd lived in the Netherlands now for years, he'd never learned the language.
So he really couldn't communicate with anybody, including Yvonne, at least not in her native tongue. But for Yvonne, if anything, the fact that people didn't necessarily think this was a good idea for them to be friends just made her feel more protective of her friend. And also, she was especially sympathetic to the fact that her friend had actually been abandoned by his mother as a child.
And so in a way, she sort of felt like she was stepping in as sort of a maternal figure in her friend's life. And so Yvonne, she rounded a corner on the park's path, and up ahead, there was her friend's house. And she could actually see her friend through one of the windows. And he did not look particularly happy, he looked sort of dejected.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Yvonne in the park on May 18th, 2007?
when two things happened at once. The first thing was she noticed there was a group of kids in the park who were throwing rocks and she knew instinctively like the kids should not be throwing rocks. So that's sort of registered. She wasn't doing anything about it, but she was just aware that there are children throwing rocks nearby.
And then the second thing she noticed is she heard splashing coming from behind her. She didn't think it was coming from the kids throwing rocks, She's thinking it didn't rain anytime recently, so there's no reason that there'd be splashing sounds around her. There's no puddles or anything.
The only splashing that made sense was it was coming from the stream that was sort of off limits in the park. Nobody had access to it. There was no reason to get down there to that stream. But it sounded very much like that was the splashing that she was hearing. And so Yvonne, she's just consciously aware of these things happening. This was not something that was alarming. She's just aware.
And so she found herself turning around to see in particular what that splashing sound was. And as she turned around, something huge smashed into her, pinned her to the ground. All she could hear was screaming throughout the park. And the last thought she had before she blacked out was, oh my God, I'm about to die.
Not far away, a man named Arvide Hendrix, who had also come to the same park with his wife and his two kids, heard the screams echoing through the park. He was right outside the cafe that Yvonne had been walking towards, and he had just been about to go inside when all this commotion had started. So this particular cafe sat on a path that cut through the park itself.
It was a small place, almost like a glorified snack bar. And it had a big pavilion right in front of it with outdoor seating that looked out over the park. And from Arvid's perspective, as he was standing on that pavilion near the cafe entrance, he could hear these people screaming and actually started to see them running in his direction.
But Arvid had no idea what they were screaming about or what they were running from. It just seemed like all of a sudden everybody's panicking and coming this way. And so instinctively Arvid's thinking, okay, there's something threatening going on and he needs to make sure his family is safe before he even knows what the threat is.
So he grabbed his kids and his wife and he ran into the restaurant along with everybody else. And remember this restaurant, this cafe, was not huge. Inside it sort of felt like a dining hall with large communal tables. And so with all these people rushing inside, this place quickly became chaotic. And then after all these people came inside,
a few of the people went forward and did their best to barricade the front doors. Even though they were glass and would be pretty easy to break through, they did what they could to sort of block them off. After this, despite there still being this really intense energy sort of buzzing around the room, things actually kind of calmed down.
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Chapter 3: How did Yvonne's unique friendship lead to a dangerous situation?
Produced by Jeremy Bone. Story editing by Evan Allen. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Wit Lacascio and Cole Lacascio, Perry Kroll, and Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.
Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogsden-Kiner.
Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin.
If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit SiriusXM.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.
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