Oswalt's epitaph

Ok so I am asked by this mans wife to find where she buried her husband. I journey to ascalon foothills battle throw more meteor showers then there should be at this level and finally find this gravestone. I etch what his wife asks me to then it tells me I need to return to Oswalt to get my reward. So I run back to the entrance to yaks figuring that the reward would be given from oswalts wife but sure enough she is gone. So I head into Yaks to get rid of the morale loss I suffered from my death and head outside yaks again. The quest is pointing me back to the foothills. So I go back to the foothills and the green arrow disappears. I figure maybe oswalt isn't dead so I clear out every single hydra and stone fury in the foothills and still no sign of oswalt. There are some cages around a area where there are 2 hydras to a group but they are empty. I am here to ask if anyone has completed this quest. I am one of those people who can't move on in quests until the previous one is complete. This causes me endless fustration.....HELP!

am I the only person stuck on this quest?

When you inscribe the words on the headstone, oswald's ghost appears to give you the quest reward. My guess is that if you don't talk to him before leaving the area, he doesn't re-appear. The best bet would probably be to abandon the quest and get it from Elsa again- you'll just have to run back down to his gravestone and re-inscribe the epitaph, and you should be able to complete the quest.

You were right. There must be a bug that you can only activate the tombstone to release the ghost once per quest. So if anyone else gets stuck just abandon quest then accept it again.

Where do you accept it from again? I found the lady but she just kept saying i'll follow you.

You have to get the lady safe to Yak's Bend first. After you've completed the Stragglers quest, then she'll give you the Oswalt's Epitaph quest.