I don’t have the sense that the “ricin-in-a-Vegas-hotel-room” story has captivated the nation — to be honest, I completely missed the initial headlines myself — but my ears certainly pricked up over the weekend when I heard that investigators in the case were searching a house in my hometown of Riverton, Utah.

If you haven’t been following this one, here are the details as I understand them:

On February 14, a guy named Roger Von Bergendorff checked himself into a Las Vegas hospital complaining of respiratory problems. He is now in a coma, possibly due to contact with the highly toxic substance ricin, which he appears to have been brewing up — or at least handling — in his Vegas motel room.

On February 22, Von Bergendorff’s cousin, Thomas Tholen, went to Vegas to clear out Von Bergendorff’s personal possessions from the motel, or possibly to check on VB’s pets (I’ve read contradictory accounts). He found vials of ricin in the room and alerted police; a subsequent search reportedly also turned up guns and “an anarchist-type textbook tabbed to a section on ricin.” (Hm, do you suppose they’re talking about the good old Anarchist Cookbook? Why not simply say so, then, if that’s the case? It’s not like a lot of people haven’t heard of it. I myself encountered a bad photocopy of the thing when I was in the eighth grade…)

Finally, just this past Saturday, March 1, the FBI searched a house owned by Tholen and rented for a time by Von Bergendorff, presumably looking for more ricin and/or a clue as to what the hell he was up to. If they found anything, they’re keeping it to themselves.

This house, according to MapQuest, is less than two miles from my own.

Now, I’m not the sort who’s going to hear news like this and head for the root cellar with my shotgun and army-surplus gasmask. But I’ve got to admit that it is pretty damn creepy to be watching video of men in hazmat suits walking along a street I recognize, and to also find familiar the face of the woman giving the obligatory “he was quiet and kept to himself” sound-bite. Because it’s not every day that you realize something deeply weird and possibly dangerous has been going on right here in your own neighborhood, and that whatever nefarious plans might have been afoot could have affected people you know. Maybe even your neighbors. Maybe even yourself.

I really hope the investigators figure out what this bozo was up to.

In the meantime, I guess Utah just has one more name to add to our long list of the infamous characters, eccentrics, and psychos that have local connections. There’s a lot of them, you know, ranging from the colorful-but-harmless types like Melvin Dummar to the local folk heroes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, to really scary sorts like serial killer Ted Bundy, religious fanatics and murderers Ron and Dan Lafferty, and the notorious counterfeiter and bomb maker Mark Hoffman. And those are just the famous oddities. That doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the genuine, grade-A freakshow that underlies this apparently squeaky-clean state. To be blunt, there is something about this place that generates a lot of strange stories, strange thinking, and strange activities.

Many people blame the LDS Church for this riptide of weirdness, and it’s certainly a major contributor — I’ve often heard folkloric stories of the Three Nephites, for example, repeated by wide-eyed people who truly believe there are immortals roaming the West Desert, helping out travelers and warning them of coming natural disasters — but I wonder if it’s just as much a factor of our dramatic and often harsh landscape. Having mountains looming over one shoulder and Davy Jones’ Locker only a short drive away on the other side has got to have some kind of impact on the psyche.

In truth, the weird aspects of this place, what filmmaker Trent Harris calls “Mondo Utah,” are one of the things I love most about my home state.

As long as the weirdness doesn’t involve incurable poison, of course…