They occasionally are found outside of their normal range and ususally it's because they hitched a ride but more often than not people think they were bitten by one but were not. IMO, being bitten by a recluse is kind of like being bitten by a shark. When it happens, there's not a lot of question about it. I have seen limbs lost over recluse bites. Everyone that comes though my ER thinks every bug bite they have is a recluse bite. We joke about it frequently because they almost never are.
Fortunately, as was explained to me, it had got into my sleeve and bitten me right at the bend of the elbow where a lot of the venom was absorbed by the thick calloused skin and they debrided most of that away.
Even so, I had an extreme case of cellulitis from my elbow to my wrist - I looked like Popeye for about two weeks, and over the course of several days, had a considerable amount of pus drained from my arm. That was 23 years ago and I still have a little dimple in my elbow...