So I had an obscure .htaccess problem after HH switched from LSAPI vs. FactCgi recently and here is the fix:
http://www.litespeedtech.com/support/forum/showthread.php?t=7653
Apparently simple Redirects in .htaccess now work slightly differently, or HH changed the index.html/index.php/etc. priority.
keywords: mod_alias, RedirectMatch, DirectoryIndex, index.html, index.php