Normally, there is a random weapon, and 1 other random item (can't remember which at the moment) that spawns in this room, right in front of the skeleton. Always. But for me, there was nothing there when I entered the room.
I went through 3 floors before I had found any sort of crossbow on the ground... OR a shop. I had tons of arrows though including 3 squid and 1 Mass destruction.
I too have seen the corpse of the unlucky adventurers spawning with the wrong items. In 1.0.6 it always two pieces of loot, one being a weapon and the other an armor. Since updating to 1.0.8, I've seen them with 1, 2, or 3 items of various types, and IIRC once there was a crate on the space too. I can imagine 0 items would be not only frustrating, but also awkward since the text on the skeleton mentions there being loot on the body.
Sounds interesting. If they randomized the loot its actually pretty awesome. I never liked how rooms were always giving identical stuff.
Does that include bookshelves and items spawning in the same spot in a secret room? I took the bookshelf's recipe to help distinguish from the background.