Sometimes I feel like I'm beatin' a dead horse.

[Imbalance]

I bought the horse in Whiterun to make haste during my initial journey to Iverstead on my way to meet the Greybeards. It did not show me the meaning of the word, and met its end by the bites of a large cat just shy of the woodmill. I cut my losses and have sauntered on. A number of quests later, I wondered if the stables restock.

Sure enough, there were two black horses parked outside of Whiterun. Only, one of them was mine. I'm like, "I saw you fall. I collected bandit arrows from your chewed carcass. I pushed you into the river and watched you go over the falls. Trust me, you died."
"Snort" was the only reply.

Ok, whatever. I double checked that it was indeed my owned horse, the only one I had purchased this game, not stolen. Hopped up in the saddle, checked my crime stats - no change. So, off we rode.

A little piece up the pike I see this weird bull in the road, and I'm like, "Morihaus?" Turns out it was just a sacrifice to the giants, as the farmer explained. But I go to get back on my steed, and it's gone! I found it heading back to the stables (which was good news for the farmer, who I had initially suspected of foul play). Stupid thing does it every time I dismount now. I think it's upset about the cat/waterfall incident (to be fair, I was the one who shot it with bandit arrows. I swear it was an accident. Seriously, the cat killed it, though).

Who else has seen this? Comments on the wiki are vaguely similar, but not quite the same. Nobody mentions purchased horses returning from death.

Tldr: horse died, later found at stables, definitely owned but acts stolen. Legendary Edition on 360.

[ZeRoc]

The simple guess is that the game probably removed the corpse set it to behave as stolen, but somehow crapped out when it was supposed to remove the legal status. The simple fix (probably) is to see if the guy at the stable will sell it to you agaian.

Personally, I haven't had this glitch before, so I don't know what could have caused it.

[Finn Wolfshorn]

Happens to me all the time. Handy when you need a mount for a one-way trip and don't have the money to buy a horse properly.

ETA: Just happened again - I arrive at Whiterun Stables, there's two saddled horses, one marked as mine, one not. "My horse" behaves as if stolen, and I can't buy it again (tested by console-killing the other horse, I got no dialogue option to buy a horse from the stablemaster).

[Aarah]

One word - necromancy! Those resurrected horses know they're yours but always hold a grudge.

Seriously though, I had a similar thing when my horse disappeared for months and then suddenly was back at the Solitude stables. It behaves as it should though, so seems like yours may indeed be a glitch. Seeing as it should be dead though- i'd take is as a good one.

I'm curious though- I also have legendary on 360 and the stables never seem to restock. Also, the stablemaster in Windhelm is M.I.A. and he hasn't been replaced by anyone. Windhelm horses now unpurchasable.

[Mauin]

I thought the horse issue was a glitch that was around for a while. At least... I've been getting it for a while.

I first had that happen in May of 2012. The original Vulom Staadnau encountered her long-deceased (maybe since April or so) horse wandering back to Whiterun from Labyrinthian. It happened every time I had a horse die; a new one would appear and it wouldn't act like an owned horse. The issue gets even better when the original dead horse starts duplicating itself (probably by getting killed again, which happened frequently once Dawnguard was thrown into the equation).

I got tired of dealing with that after a while and just made all horses essential/invulnerable so they couldn't die and start duplicating like another Louis Letrush at the stables.

[Imbalance]

At least I'm not alone. The horse has completely disappeared now. Not that I expected it to hang around, but from now on I'll be keeping an eye out.

I may just have an extra buggy save. I keep finding floating weapons that I can't interact with, but a pair of rubies at Orphan's Rock were able to be plucked from the sky. Nothing too severe so far, though.

[Evil-i]

I may just have an extra buggy save. I keep finding floating weapons that I can't interact with, but a pair of rubies at Orphan's Rock were able to be plucked from the sky. Nothing too severe so far, though.

I don't know if there's an "official" name for that floating weapon bug, but it seems to be very common. I tend to find these collections at "trigger points" where random interactions are supposed to happen. Usually they're collections of low level stuff, like Iron Shields, Ancient Nord Swords and Imperial Swords.

I try to clean up these clutter dumps as much as possible when I find them. I'll collect whatever I can and flush these items from the game by depositing them into a dead animal or Bandit corpse, or by selling them to a merchant. Simply leaving this clutter lying around in the open world seems to encourage it to persist and multiply, which doesn't do the game any favors.

Floating items that can't be taken can usually be made to fall to the ground by picking up a clutter weapon that's already on the ground, or by having yourself and your Follower walk through the floating object. Once on the ground, these items can be picked up.

[Sirocco]

I pushed you into the river and watched you go over the falls.

You got some strange hobbies, you know that.