Ghost Ship

The Ghost Ship is a haunted wooden ship that appears in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. In its debut appearance, the Ghost Ship has a derelict, transparent design, but has been redesigned entirely in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, where it is no longer partially transparent.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the Ghost Ship appears around certain islands of the Great Sea depending on the phase of the moon. It is surrounded by small, blue flames, and the sky is covered in dark gray clouds whenever the Ghost Ship is in that area. Link cannot go onto Ghost Ship unless he has obtained the Ghost Ship Chart, otherwise the Ghost Ship vanishes if Link and the King of Red Lions approach it.

With the Ghost Ship Chart, Link automatically goes into the ship when he approaches it. He must defeat two Poes and a Wizzrobe who can summon ReDeads and Stalfos. After defeating the enemies, a ladder drops, and Link can climb it to enter a room with a Treasure Chest. He can open the chest to obtain a Triforce Chart (or a Triforce Shard in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD). After collecting the item, a loud, ghostly laughter is heard, and Link returns back at sea on the King of Red Lions. Once Link has collected the treasure, the Ghost Ship vanishes from the Great Sea entirely.

The Ghost Ship appears at either one of seven islands.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Another Ghost Ship has a major role in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, where it is all three an extension of the main antagonist, Bellum, a dungeon, and a boss. It looks quite different, being covered in large, golden skulls and having two golden arm statues carrying hanging torches. It is first mentioned by Tetra and her crew in the opening after Niko's cutout show, where it is mentioned to be rumored to have a vast lode of treasure inside, but that every ship who has gone searching for it has mysteriously vanished. Tetra is eager to find it, and manages to locate it in a fog bank. She then jumps across to it, and Link attempts to follow, but slips and falls into the water. After recovering, Link spends a large amount of time attempting to search for it with his new companions, Ciela and Linebeck.

Once Link has gotten the cannon from Eddo and bombed through the rock wall in the Southwestern Sea, the Ghost Ship suddenly appears, prompting Linebeck to eagerly ask to follow it. They follow it northwards into the Northwestern Sea, where they get lost in a huge fog bank. In order to reach it, the group travels to the nearby Molida Island, where the path through it is revealed, along with the implicit fact that the Ghost Ship has been taking victims for a long time. While they manage to get through the fog, they lose the ship.

After reuniting all three spirits, they go after the ship again. In the fog bank, Linebeck's ship suddenly breaks down, making it so Linebeck has to keep the engine running himself while Link steers, using blinking from the spirits as a directional guide. Once he successfully approaches it, he boards it along with Linebeck, who gets cold and scared on the deck. The deck is empty aside from a swarm of six Keese, though inside, there is a maze patrolled by Reaplings, indicated to be those who have fallen to the ship. To avoid the Reaplings, Link must use safe zones, like those in the Temple of the Ocean King. Also inside are Rats, Skulltulas, Poes, blue fire bars, Ropes, and four separated sisters of the House of Cubus who claim to be trapped and in need of reuniting. Link must escort the three older Cubus Sisters past the Reaplings to the youngest one. Shaped gems are use to open shortcuts past areas Link has already been through, shortening the process. Hints from both signs and the sisters lead to traps that additionally cause more Reaplings to appear. Once all four are reunited, it is revealed the Cubus Sisters are actually malevolent spirits themselves, and act as the dungeon boss. Once they are defeated, Link receives a Ghost Key, unlocking a passage to where Tetra is found, while the fog bank disappears. Tetra is found to have had the life force drained from her, rendering her petrified. Oshus appears and explains the ship was what drained her, and tells the story of his past as the Ocean King and what Bellum is, while Linebeck is horrified by the lack of treasure. After they leave, the Ghost Ship itself vanishes.

The dungeon notably lacks a dungeon item, as all the chests within contain Rupees of large amounts (potentially vindicating the claims of a large lode of treasure), Rupoors, and shaped crystals. The reward for defeating the boss is the Ghost Key, which is used to unlock a passage within the ship itself and is not thematic with other dungeon rewards. The dungeon has two miniboss encounters: a group of three Poes guarding the first Cubus Sister, and a group of five Skulltulas in the cargo hold.

Near the end of the game, after Bellum escapes the Temple of the Ocean King, the Ghost Ship reappears, with Bellum inhabiting it physically and attempting to sail away. With Linebeck now driving the SS Linebeck of his own accord, Link must use the cannon to destroy all of Bellum's eyes, which shoot pink projectiles at them. These projectiles usually go through the air, but sometimes travel along the surface of the water. Some eyes disappear before being fully destroyed and grow back later. Most of the eyes are on the outer hull of the ship, but some of them on stalks are on the deck, only vulnerable when they stretch up to shoot. Once all the eyes are destroyed, the Ghost Ship is destroyed. On its rubble, Link and then Linebeck fight Bellum, with the latter ending up possessed, becoming Bellumbeck. After Linebeck is freed from Bellum and Bellum destroyed, the Ocean King sends Link and Tetra back to their own world. They wake up aboard the intact-but-harmless Ghost Ship, which vanishes for good shortly after they reboard the pirate ship.

Appearance
In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the interior of the Ghost Ship is a wide, mostly empty area except for a row of four skulls on the left and right sides each. A small beam of light emitting from the right side. Link starts on an elevated platform, and the wooden floor appears below. Part of the roof is missing, and the sky background is black and shows a pattern of ghosts. On the opposite side of the entrance is a yellow ladder connected to another wooden platform that leads into the room with six vases and a Treasure Chest. A golden face with a neutral expression is on the wall behind the Treasure Chest, fading into a large grin as he approaches, and appearing neutral again in first-person view. The room with the chest also has two pairs of blue window valances attached to the ceiling.

In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, the floor of the Ghost Ship is covered in a blue mist with ghostly faces. The golden face on the wall is always shown with a neutral expression.

Trivia

 * A slightly edited version of the Ghost Ship's sky background is a background in three galaxies of Super Mario Galaxy, each with a haunted theme, Ghostly Galaxy, Bonefin Galaxy, and Boo's Boneyard Galaxy.
 * In Phantom Hourglass, the theme that plays when pursuing the Ghost Ship through the fog contains an excerpt of Ganon's theme.