Sparseimage should contain files but showing empty

Surprised this isn't more widely covered... or maybe I've missed the best way to search it but I've got a read/write sparseimage (not the first time this has happened) that's enormous in size but when mounted shows 0 files. The image has been the destination for an afp backup for quite some time and should contain hundreds of gigs of data. The size seems to be correct but when mounted shows nothing. Disk utility seems to imply the volume is ok, but disk warrior says "successfully built a new directory for the disk named "xyz". The new directory cannot replace the original directory due to a Mac OS services failure." Volume on the image is jhfs+. With os set to show all files, it does show the hidden trash, spotlight and .fseventsd folders. Is it possible the contents were erased? Would a read/write sparse image still show as enormous if files were deleted? Any thoughts would be hugely appreciated.

Quoted from the Wiki:

Unlike a full image file (.dmg), which takes up as much actual space as the real disk it represents (regardless of the amount of unused space), a sparse image file (.sparseimage) takes up only as much actual disk space as the data contained within.

I would say that there's a chance your files are still in there somewhere. Why they're hidden or can not be accessed is another matter. Besides, how would you go about deleting just the files and not the image? Did you by chance use encryption when you created the image?

no encryption used. files could be deleted by mounting the image and deleting while keeping the image itself intact. curious if it's possible that the image was accessed by someone else and deleted, but again the size of the image is what seems to imply data is still there and simply "lost" for lack of a better term.

ended up scrapping the image and re-creating. if anyone sees this and has insight - would still love to learn a solution since I've seen it in the past and re-creating a large image across afp is super time consuming especially in a production environment.