I have played many hours of Skyrim, with many characters some of whom I've taken to fairly high levels. I have occsionally had a dragon fail to yield up a soul and remain solid, but it's been rare, and they've always been dragons I've killed.

In my most recent game, I just finished the MQ, and now I have dead dragons all over the place. These are not dragons I've killed. I fast-travel into Morthal and there's a dead dragon in the water. I fast travel to one of my houses, and there's a dead dragon on the roof (it falls to the ground). I fast travel to Solitude and there is a dead dragon by the palace.

In every case, the dragon is empty, and does not yield up a soul. As this is the first time this sort of thing has happened, I suspect some terrible disease has struck the dragons of Skyrim and they are literally dropping from the skies. I can only hope that no one is killed by the falling bodies.

Has anyone else noticed this, and if so, has it been a recent occurence?

If this has already been discussed, please forgive me. If not, and it's happened to you, could you share?

Never heard about this...

Do you have the Dragonborn DLC? Maybe it's Miirak.

I do have DB, but I completed that MQ before the Skyrim MQ on this character (hmmm, wonder if that has anything to do with it).

It may be a bug in the Saved Game, I have a character that has a Blood Dragon rolling across the Tundra of Whiterun, and a Skeletal Mirmulnir tail sticking out of the ground at the Western Watchtower. I have another Save with Mirmulnir stuck under the bridge inside the Whiterun Gate.
I have not noticed an increase in Dragon Corpses with any characters that have completed Dragonborn before the Main Quest.
It is unnerving to run into the intact ones.

Actually, this just started happening to me. The same dragon keeps appearing in different places. It is an ancient dragon. I think it is one I killed at Eldersblood Peak. That was the last ancient dragon I remember killing before this unwelcome pest started popping up (falling down?) when I enter some cells. For instance, it has shown up at the front gate of Whiterun when I fast travel there. Other times, it has shown up next to the Gildergreen when I exit Jorvaskr. It has also dropped out of the sky when I leave Honningbrew Meadery. I don't know what it causing this. The one thing that stands out about that particular dragon, if it is the one I think it might be, is that I killed it while riding on a Revered Dragon. I didn't absorb its soul and so it shows up fully skinned. I may have missed its soul because I had killed the dragon at Eldersblood Peak before, or because I was airborne and at some distance from it the second time I killed the dragon there.

I also ran across skeletal Vuljotnak even though I had killed him months ago game time. I am not sure he is still there. I will go and check again.

Let me add a suggestion for the OP: to track whether it is the same dragon showing up, put something somewhat unique into its inventory. That way, when it shows up again, you can search it to see if that item you placed in its inventory is there. If it is, it is the same dragon showing up in multiple locations.

You probably have a traveling skeleton following you. If so, it's the same dead dragon, rather than multiple different ones.

That is kind of cute. I suppose you could think of him as a pet.

Do you have the 1.9 beta patch installed. IIRC it messes with the occurence of dragons post main quest and this may be an artifact due to changes that have been made.

This.
And also, see if it's still a common occurrence when approaching those areas without fast travel.
Sometimes when I load (or reload) a nearby cell after killing a dragon, they drop from the sky in front of me.

If you're on PC, use the console command Markfordelete on dragon corpses and you don't have to worry about crazy skeletons again.

The same is happening to alot of people. It started with the installment of Dawnguard, and has gotten very much worse with the installment of Dragonborn. I have had several, and there were actually a couple that yielded souls and plunder, but most did not. Hope this helps.

But the way, not all are skeletons.

I found a dragon butt staring at me when I exited the Ratways, one time.

A dragon butt has eyes? I will have to investigate this rumor.

Just one.

it happens all the time on my xbox. i was in solitude and went into my house for 2 mins and when i came back out, there was a dead dragon. same with goin into temple of kynareth in whiterun. - that was awesome too cus it was dead on hemskirs house and the fences around gildergreen that were both destroyed durin civil war

Good idea. I'll see if I can make this happen.

No, indeed. Mine are fully fleshed.

Mine are usually both. Half the time a skeleton, and the other half of the time with flesh. I just learned to live with it, figuring that one day they will all get cleaned up.

Try shooting it with a spell to propel the corpse out of the draw range? Maybe that'll keep it from following.

I saw this once in Whiterun. There was a dragon corpse in the square (where Belethor's and the Alchemy shop is). It couldn't be looted, and didn't yield a soul. I figured it was a graphics glitch or something- like the dragon was actually somewhere else, but the game was drawing it in Whiterun, and that's why I couldn't loot it or get the soul.

That was quite a long time ago (at least a year), and I haven't seen anything like it since.

The theory that it's a corrupted save game sounds plausible.

Yeah I had those things to on several occasions, dead dragons, skeletal dragons but most of the time that "bug" happened when I reach a shrine with a dragon waiting, a "dead" copy laying or falling from the sky before me.

Don't forget, after all Dragons are the Cliffracers of Skyrim. We need a new Saint to clear Skyrim of them

I've given my dragon a dwemer gyro. We'll see if the dragon shows up in another place with said gyro.

This was a bug at launch. Weird it has made a resurgence of sorts.

Yeah it's a weird issue, I see it cropping up more and more over the past month or so. I had this bug a couple times near release, then I installed the unofficial patches and it seemed to halt it, (whether the Unofficial Patch actually addressed the issue I am not sure, but it felt that way).

Dawnguard came and went, then Hearthfire, and ofcourse their respective Unofficial Patches, then came Dragonborn, even with the UDBP, this happens to EVERY dragon I kill, maybe not immediately, but eventually, they all catch up to me in the end, as another user above stated, I started to just "disable" "markfordelete" the corpses and be done with it.

For me atleast, this issue cropped up around the time I installed dragonborn.

Just gonna put a couple more lines of info, hopefully someone can match up the same scenarios?

I absorb the soul normally, flesh turns to bone, then at an undetermined amount of time later it will plop into existence, with its flesh back, ofcourse unabsorbable ( < unabsorbable? I didn't sleep too much haha) the second time around.

I never fast travel, so it's not like it is something wrong with FT, as I shouldn't have it if it was, right?

It can happen to me as I am walking along a road in the wilds, it just appears, no load screen, although I suppose I could have crossed a cell border and it's that that needs looking at?

Wishful thinking maybe, but hopefully someone figures out what causes this weird phenomenon, if it is at all even possible to narrow down the cause of such a (seemingly) widespread issue.

Update: My dead dragons are indeed the one and only dragon with a dwemer gyro. He appears in just about every location to which I fast travel. He's on my roof, he's in the main thoroughfare of Solitude, he's in Morthal up on someone's porch. He is my personal alligator suitcase. Too bad I can't trust him: I could load him up with gear and just let him follow me around Skyrim.