HELP!!!

["Erik Manning" <expeditions@abetterview.net>]

I'm afraid I'm in the midst of a tragedy....
Tonight, I was managing my ring, activating new sites and removing invalid ones,
when suddenly everything stopped working and I received the following error
message in my browser:
"Can't open
/usr/local/www/virtual/anewperspective/webring/data/themering/ring.db
No such file or directory"
Sure enough, when I logged into my FTP and checked the data directory for this
ring, six files were missing:
addmail.txt
addpage.txt
codepage.txt
htmlcode.txt
ring.db
sites.db
Why would all of these files suddenly disappear?  I can understand if the two
.db files got deleted due to corruption, but why would the .txt files also
disappear?
Is there any way to restore these files?  My last backup was a couple of weeks
ago, and I've had a lot of new submissions since then.  Is all lost?
I would blame my server, but the other ring that I have running on the system is
fine...no problems whatsoever.
Could my files have been hacked into?
Any assistance would be GREATLY appreciated!!!
Happy Holidays,
Erik Manning:  expeditions@abetterview.net
A Better View:  http://www.abetterview.net/
The DTCC Webring:  http://www.anewperspective.net/dtccwebring/
The Desktop Theme Creators and Collectors List:  http://dtcclist.tripod.com/
Desktop Themes Webring:  http://www.anewperspective.net/themering/index.shtml