The Ghost of Plankton

"The Ghost of Plankton" is a SpongeBob SquarePants episode from Season 12. In this episode, Plankton becomes a ghost to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula, but requires a few lessons from the Flying Dutchman before doing so.

Plot
The episode starts with Plankton watching a horror movie on Karen's screen on movie night. When he pretends to be a ghost, he gets an idea to steal the secret formula. After Karen unplugs herself, Plankton creates a ghost extracting machine, and turns into a ghost. By being a ghost, he can go through walls, which is how he got into the safe in the Krusty Krab. However, by being a ghost, he can go through walls, but he cannot pick things up either, leading to what seems to be a failure.

That is when the Flying Dutchman appears on Mr. Krabs' chair, cackling, and tells Plankton that it takes some training to pick things up, and he picks up the bottle on his first try. So the training begins.

Shapeshifting
First off, the Flying Dutchman tells Plankton that he needs to learn the art of shapeshifting, in which one should think of a scary thought, and then they become that scary thought. The Flying Dutchman turns into multiple scary things, and then it is Plankton's turn. He turns into a weird shape, but since it is not scary, he becomes a duplicate of the Flying Dutchman. Accepting the pupil's talent, the Flying Dutchman whacks him with a mallet. They move on to lesson two.

Scaring
In order to be a proper ghost, one has to scare others. The Flying Dutchman scares the life out of a robber, and when Plankton does his scare, he accidentally scares himself through a mirror. The Flying Dutchman accepts it, hits him with a golf club, and they move on to lesson three.

Haunting Houses
For this lesson, one has to make another's life a nightmare by haunting their house. The Flying Dutchman and Plankton go over to Squidward's house, and the haunting begins. Plankton becomes Squidward's bed and shakes, waking Squidward up. When he finds out his bed is haunted, Squidward hides in the dresser, with his clarinet. But he plays his clarinet badly, and a few seconds later, an annoyed Plankton pulls the clarinet from Squidward and morphs into a SpongeBob ghost, and becomes visible. Squidward tries to escape, but knocks himself unconscious. Plankton, realizing he took the clarinet, finds out that he can pick things up now. They move onto the final lesson.

How to Pick Things Up
In this final lesson, the Flying Dutchman tells Plankton that he has to be really angry in order to pick something up. On a second attempt to steal the formula, Plankton picks it up just fine after hearing the Dutchman's advice. However, when he tries to take it out of the safe, the bottle will not go through the wall, as it is not a ghost. After admitting defeat, he decides to go back to his regular body.

But when he enters the Chum Bucket, he is surprised to find out that Karen had invited everyone to Plankton's funeral because he left his body alone for too long. His corpse lay on a coffin, and Plankton feels like getting into his body when the Flying Dutchman says he is dead forever. Plankton denies it, saying he is only a "temporary" ghost, but an eager Flying Dutchman goes into Plankton's body to be alive again. Believing that Plankton played a cruel joke by pretending to be dead, all the mourners, except SpongeBob, get real angry. They form a mob and stomp on the Flying Dutchman in Plankton's body. He decides to give up and give Plankton his body back. Plankton happily accepts, and even after being stomped multiple times by the people, he says that it is good to be alive. The episode ends with the Flying Dutchman doing a jump scare in front of a "The End" card.