Found several folders empty.  The files were found in the trash.  All files are MS products.  Is this a virus of some sort?

I recently found several of my folders were emtpy.  Out of desperation I looked in the Trash, and found that all my files are somewhat systematically being moved to the trash.  All the files are MS (I use Office for Mac), including Adobe.  Has anyone experienced this?  What's the "fix"? 

I found another thread discussing a problem similar to yours:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/22613149#22613149 ("Files in my trash bin which I didn't put")
One of the people who responded, thomas_r., is a virus expert and has an excellent website -- thesafemac.com -- all about Macs and viruses. He did not think a virus would cause this.
So I'd definitely recommend making a backup (or preferably two, since hard drives eventually fail), and you could upgrade to Mavericks (especially since Snow Leopard appears to be no longer supported by Apple) -- but based on Thomas's reply, I don't think a virus is causing this.

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