This article uses information provided by Wikipedia.
See also: The Elder Scrolls, Morrowind.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fifth installment in The Elder Scrolls action role-playing video game series, following The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Skyrim's main story revolves around the player character's efforts to defeat Alduin, a Dragon who is prophesied to destroy the world. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the game takes place in the fictional province of Skyrim. The game continues the open world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel anywhere in the game world at any time and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely. A perpetual objective for players is to improve their character's skills, which are numerical representations of certain abilities.
Skyrim was a huge critical and commercial success; over 7 million copies were shipped to retailers within the first week of release and the game sold more than 20 million copies across all platforms. Three downloadable content (DLC) add-ons were released: Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn. The game and its DLC were repackaged as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Legendary Edition, which was released on June 4, 2013 for all three platforms.
The Secret Room of the Dead[]
Where do people go when they die? It all depends on who you ask, and if you ask Skyrim, the answer is, apparently, "To a dark, weirdly colored, cross-shaped room far under the ground."
What you're looking at is the Skyrim death room. (Alternate names include the Underworld, That Place With All the Dead People, and "Holy Shit, What is This?") It's a room underneath the ground that's filled with the corpses of characters who have died in the game. Not all NPCs go there, of course. Only the unlucky few do. Some are allowed a proper death; others are automatically banished to this small room in the middle of nowhere where they languish in a pile on the ground for all eternity.
And while you can only reach it via console commands or running into a game bug, it's totally intentional -- the name of the room in the game's code is WIDeadBodyCleanupCell, and it's even got two little coffins down there to let you know just where you are. Also, although the ends of the crossed corridors are open, they don't lead anywhere. Walking out of them simply drops you back in the middle of the death room, like in those endless loop levels in Super Mario 3, but with more death stench. Even the few dead NPCs who are up walking around can't leave. The room can be useful if you accidentally killed some poor character and still need to talk to him or her (again, only a few seem to make it down there), but otherwise it's just there to make you crap your pants and never play the game again.
Walking Mannequins[]
Some time after the game's release, many players have reported seeing mannequins move their heads or legs, and actually walk around by themselves, as if they were NPCs. This strange phenomenon seemed to be more prevalent on the first release of Skyrim, and it sparked a massive uproar of rumors and reports that mannequins would kill the player or follow him around. These rumors, however, have since been proven to be false.
The phenomenon of the moving mannequins, however, is 100% proven and is now known to be a simple glitch. Mannequins are actually NPCs with a wooden skin texture, and they are frozen in place by a script. However, sometimes while loading a house, the mannequin's script isn't applied quickly enough, and they will begin performing idle NPC movements for a brief moment, and then they will become frozen in place. The player may notice this on his own; sometimes, when entering his home, one or more of the mannequins will appear to be in a slightly different position than they were before (for example, they may have turned their heads or raised the arms slightly, before getting frozen again).
However, due to a more rare glitch, the mannequin's script may never get applied at all, resulting in the mannequins walking around and moving like normal NPCs while the player is inside a house with them. They have no lines of dialogue, and their somewhat secretive nature and their movements may seem quite unsettling to the player.
The Lady in the Woods[]
This is a popular myth in the game which was spurred from two readable in-game books. The first one, called The Woodcutter's Wife, tells about a lady who was cursed by a wizard for killing him in his sleep. The lady was supposedly cursed to rise after her death and roam the woods with an axe in her hand for an eternity. The very last part of the book reads, "To this day, those who walk the pine forest late at night tell tales of a weeping woman glimpsed between the trees. She carries a bloody axe, the stories say, and is terrifying to behold".
A second, seemingly unrelated book can be found in-game as well, called The Cabin in the Woods. It tells of a traveling soldier who is on his way home, and must camp for the night. While trying to fall asleep, he hears what sounds like a woman softly sobbing from the outside of his tent. This persists for a few minutes, but then stops. The next night, he hears the sobbing much clearer. Frightened, he takes his sword and exits his shelter to see what the noise is. To his surprise, he finds himself looking at a ghostly apparition of a woman, holding an axe in her hands. The ghost begins laughing hysterically, and the soldier tries to strike her with his sword, but this is ineffective. Finally, he uses a scroll of Firebolt, and the ghostly apparition explodes before him.
It has been theorized that The Cabin in the Woods is a sequel to The Woodcutter's Wife, due to their similarities. Both of these books can be read in-game, and they may appear in various bookshelves in houses around the map.
Since the release of the game, many players have reported hearing sobbing or wailing sounds around the forests and swamps in Hjaalmarch, and around the Pine Forest. They have also reported seeing a silky white apparition floating through the air in these areas, and strange lights moving around the forest. The myth of the Lady in the Woods is one of the most popular myths in the game, and there are many online photos and videos supposedly showing this ghost manifest itself.