Hello, I recently started Skyrim back up so I could finally play through Dawnguard. I proceeded to do the quests siding with the vampires, and I am now in the Soul Cairn. Everything is fine, until I kill the executioner, and I can't loot him or his spawns. I then go to advance the quest, and I cannot talk to the lady at the door. I somehow lost the follower too, not sure if that is the reason for this glitch. Has anyone experienced any issue like this? Is there any way to fix it without losing a few hours of exploring?

Losing the followers is common, and dawnguard has ALOT of game breaking bugs and bugs in general that are hit and miss. Some have a perfect game, some get stuck somewhere like where you are.

Dawnguard seemed to have actually ruined the scripts of one of my games for some reason, no one was where they were supposed to be and they kind of just ended up in random inaccessible places. That I haven't heard of from everyone else so my game just got corrupted, may not have been dawnguard, but dawnguard does have script issues at times.

So as to how to fix it, you're on a console. I can't imagine any way of fixing it honestly. Others simply reset their game to an older save or made a new file if the problem continued.

They may be your only options.

Yeah I assumed as much. Thanks for the response.

Someone else may be able to give a more suitable solution, I just can't think of any.

I'm on the PC version and before the unofficial patch came out, the amount of times I had to use console commands because issues that would pop up. And there were actually some issues where, I still had to delete the entire game. Console commands weren't enough to help out.

So... at least you're not alone when it comes to bugs? xD

Serana is always getting stuck or lost, go back to where the reaper was if she was with you then and look around, she would have just got stuck on some hill somewhere along the way, soon as she sees you she will run up to you. Then go see her mum, you have to have Serana with you for the quest to progress.

And the problem with the reaper happens a lot, he really had nothing that special anyway, so you still would have ended up disappointed.

See? Better to wait

Unless you just can't find Serana at all.

You can always try running around like an idiot and using aura whisper to find her, she will be standing around doing nothing in there somewhere. Just wait till you get to the Forgotten Vale, Serana is a lousy swimmer as well, tends to sink! And do not ask her to wait unless you save first, or you might find a quest breaking glitch.