Explore the nation’s spookiest towns

As a travel nurse, you have the wonderful opportunity to visit some of the nation's spookiest towns. Whether you are visiting the location on assignment during the month of October or are there during the spring, many of these places celebrate their colorful past year round.

Here are five spooky towns in America:

1. Salem, Massachusetts. Come visit the original witch city. This classic New England town is haunted with a past peppered with tragedy. You can visit the tombstones marked with the names of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials and see a recreation of the dank and dark dungeons many townsfolk were forced to live in while awaiting trial.

2. San Francisco, California. This American metro features a rich cultural history. Take a trip to one of the most infamous jails in the nation's history – Alcatraz. The former maximum-security prison is home to a wide variety of ghost stories. Tourists and natives claim to have seen ghosts walking the corridors of the prison and have even heard moans and voices coming from what was once the cafeteria.

3. Sleepy Hollow, New York. Visit the town known as a location where terrible haunted happenings once occurred. The iconic headless horseman figure is celebrated in the town. The Daily Meal reports that visitors can walk the Old Dutch Burying ground and search for the tombstones of characters that inspired Irving Washington's tale.

4. Athens, Ohio. Haunted tales are not only created around coastal communities. Athens is home to dozens of spooky events based on the town's colorful past. Many people claim that the city's five major graveyards make the shape of a pentagram from the air, and strange pagan rituals are the connecting theme of the area's paranormal events. The town has one of the most famous lunatic asylums in the United States – the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Hundreds of lobotomies were performed in the institution when it was open from 1874 to 1993.

5. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This historic location is the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Over 150,000 soldiers fought here, and approximately 50,000 were wounded, killed or listed as missing. Today, the historic site is peppered with ghost tales due to the sheer mass of paranormal activity recorded in the area. One of the more popular haunted happenings is the tale of numerous tourists visiting the site and believing they witnessed a reenactment of the battle, only to find out that no human one occurred.