This is a strange glitch that's occurred during both of my play throughs of Skyrim, but in my second run it's managed to completely stop dragons from appearing. While this may seem great to some people, the down side is that I can't absorb any more dragon souls to unlock shouts with. I haven't actually unlocked any shouts for a while, so if dragon appearances are linked to your amount of unlocked shouts then that would answer my question - I haven't heard this explanation though so I doubt it's the case.

So, the easiest way to describe what's happening is to link to the video I uploaded of it happening during my first play through

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-NYEn3hPK0

What happens in the video is I encounter a dragon that seems to have fallen from the sky and is for all intents and purposes dead, though it still jiggles and moves around like it's being animated via electric shock or jerked around by some divine puppetmaster, if you will. It doesn't clip at all, so you can walk straight through it, and it never turns skeletal. This was happening in Solitude, and every time I exited a building it'd act as if it'd been dropped from the sky again - falling and crumpling into different positions and slightly different locations. It originally contained the usual goodies, but after that first looting it remained empty (or still containing anything you left in there).

This was just a quirky anomaly the first time around because I still encountered dragons, although this may be linked to the fact that I shortly thereafter embarked on the main quests involving certain ancient dragons and then went on to defat Alduin. Enter Saul Kafka, my second character, and eventually the same thing happens...sort of. This time I actually see a dragon fall from the sky and into a river, burning up on impact. All looks and sounds very cool, and I assume he/she had a heart attack or choked on an eagle or something and just enjoy the free dragon soul/bones and go on my way. A few quests later and after clearing out Dead Crone Rock in The Reach (fantastic 'level', that one) I notice another phantom dragon who this time is gaping and biting at air in a mermerising fashion - I recorded this too but didn't upload it. The fascinating abomination contains only the items I left in the dragon I met on my way to Markarth, suggesting that it's somehow the same dragon even though it has its skin in this incarnation.

I didn't think much of it until I realised that I've not once encountered a single dragon since all that happened, and that was a long time ago now - I don't fast travel and meander in a long circle around Skyrim and I'm pretty much back in The Reach now, no way should I have been dragon free for all this time. I've mentioned this glitch before (twitching redead dragons) and nobody else has encountered it; I'm a 360 player who's accepted all updates and experienced this over the course of at least three different version builds.

Unsolved mysteries of Skyrim.

-RiC

I have had the same thing happen a couple of time but I still get random dragon attacks. The dragon corpse that would fall from the sky or randomly appear after leaving an enclosed area (for me) was the very first dragon you kill after Bleakfalls barrow, I only know this cause I used his corpse to clear the area of dead guard gear so when I went to loot the dead dragon it had 2 Whiterun guard helms, 2 shields, 2 swords, which is what I put on the first dragon. But it stopped after a while of playing and has not happened since ( been about 2-3 weeks).

I just watched your vid., I have never had it happen in side a walled area like you, just outside maybe your glitch is a little different then the one I have?

Where are you looking? if your not looking in mountains then look thar