Why is CFDirectory telling me the directory exists when I try to create it?

I'm trying to create a directory with the following code:

<cfdirectory action="CREATE" directory="#ExpandPath('./bloop')#" mode="644">

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I get an error that the directory could not be created and the most likely cause of this error is that the directory already exists on my file system. (It does not; I picked a purposefully silly name that would not have been used before and DirectoryExists says it doesn't.) The StackTrace is as follows:

coldfusion.tagext.io.FileUtils$CannotCreateDirectoryException: The specified directory /var/www/vhosts/cadetesting.com/skip.cadetesting.com/bloop could not be created. at coldfusion.tagext.io.FileUtils.createDirectory(FileUtils.java:150) at coldfusion.tagext.io.DirectoryTag.doStartTag(DirectoryTag.java:330) at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage._emptyTcfTag(CfJspPage.java:2795) at cftest2dcreate2ddirectory2ecfm1395647809.runPage(/var/www/vhosts/cadetesting.com/skip.cadetesting.com/test-create-directory.cfm:1) at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:244) at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:446) at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:65) at coldfusion.filter.IpFilter.invoke(IpFilter.java:64) at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:430) at coldfusion.filter.RequestMonitorFilter.invoke(RequestMonitorFilter.java:48) at coldfusion.filter.MonitoringFilter.invoke(MonitoringFilter.java:40) at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:112) at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:94) at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28) at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38) at coldfusion.filter.NoCacheFilter.invoke(NoCacheFilter.java:58) at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38) at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22) at coldfusion.filter.CachingFilter.invoke(CachingFilter.java:62) at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:219) at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:89) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:303) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208) at coldfusion.monitor.event.MonitoringServletFilter.doFilter(MonitoringServletFilter.java:42) at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:46) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:218) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:110) at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:506) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:169) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:103) at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:962) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:116) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:466) at org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpProcessor.process(AjpProcessor.java:197) at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:637) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:316) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

It doesn't say anything about permissions being denied, and this is on a server that we have full access to, not in a sandbox. We're on a Linux server -- any idea what the trouble might be? Thanks!