ZugZugZwang

Something similar happened to me a moment ago. The difference in my case was that i made meat effigy in slanty's main room and skyworthy in another one. Upon death in RoG i revived in Hamlet using meat effigy in slanty. Everything was fine until i moved to another room. What i saw was the glitch you described - the room was empty, character invisible (although still present in the room). As the room loaded, i got briefly burnt (i had no firepit in that room or any fire source that could cause this, except carrying a torch in my inventory), and died to Charlie a moment after (although i had light source in that room). Since it was a world with 450+ days, i wasn't very happy seeing this happen.