DELETE DIRECTORY goes beserk

[jbarnett@charming.nrtc.northrop.com]

Recently, we generated an 8.1 world for our site.  Today I copied it to
the namespace server machine and it seemed to run properly.  Later, I
started to do some disk deletions.  In particular, I did a DELETE DIRECTORY.
It not only deleted (and expunged) the specified directory and all of its
descendants it deleted some (not all) sibling directories and all of their
descendants.  I tried an experiment: I did a DELETE DIRECTORY on another
directory and specified the :CONFIRM EACH option so I could see what it was
about to do.  Once again, it was screwing some of the sibs, nieces, nephews,
etc.  (I stopped the delete at this point.)  I also ran the disk salvager
and it found nothing unusual.

Anbody having (had) a similar experience?  Should I suspect 8.1, the world
on this machine, this machine (a 3670 by the way), its disk?  Any clues
most appreciated.

Jeff