heard it numerous times back in circa ‘61 (yeah, I’m old) when I was in jr. high.
Back then, beehive hairdo’s were popular. They’re achieved by “ratting” (frizzing up) the hair and then sculpting an exterior.
Anyway, the story goes that a girl with a beehive hairdo was in a garage, (most versions placed her in the garage with her boyfirend and they were making out).
Anyway she bushed up against a black widows nest and the black widow got in her hair and built a nest.
And of course it ended up biting her and she died.
I began to suspect this was made up when I heard it from a number of unrelated people who all claimed the girl was their cousin.
Anyone out there ever hear this one?

That sounds like something that would be on snopes… let me check.

Yep, right here.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/hairdo.asp

Heh, I’ve never heard how the spiders got in the hairdo in the first place before.

Well, if there are black widows in your garage and you’re brushing up against them, I’m thinking hairdo doesn’t matter.

In redneck territory everybody is a cousin of everybody.
So that part could be true.

Well, I remember the hairstyle, I too was in Junior High (now called Middle School) at the time, and yes, it happened to a classmate of a friend’s sister at another school.

I can actually see this happening. And the way I heard it was with a rat or a bat (but not a cat) getting in the hair somehow, and popping out at some sort of social event. The hair woule have to be something really Marge Simpson-esque though.

*makes note to change his beehive hairdo to a different style*

And yes, I’ve heard this story many times.  But it was always in collections of stories of the “tell them around a campfire” type.

Well, owning a rat, and knowing that bats have sonar, neither of them sound likely either…