My pics disappeared. Can I restore them somehow?

Under the parent drive dropbox I have a folder called Ancestry. I was full of pictures related to my Ancestry.com family tree project. Last week I wanted to copy a photo from that folder. I opened the folder and it displayed a subfolder of the same name. I opened that subfolder that displayed a second subfolder, again with the same name. When I opened that folder it is empty. Where did my pictures go?

I checked the trash bin, no deleted files present. I have been searching diligently with no joy.

Has anyone run into this problem. I am desperate to find out how this happened to avoid it from happening to the other folders in my dropbox account. Moreover, the pictures that disappeared were of significant value and I would like to recover them if possible.