Yup, sounds like maggots I'm afraid. We got them in a trash can a month ago and they still give me the creeps. Flies lay their eggs near a food source, but not always.

OP here. I'm pretty sure they were maggots. My neighbor had given me a brown paper bag full of chestnuts he apparently gathered from a tree in his yard. I set them down on a table in the family room the day before I saw the bugs. When I saw the bugs, I suspected the chestnuts but looked in the bag and didn't see any bugs at all, and the bugs were all around our family room, not just near the bag. Still, I put the bag in the garage just in case. The next day, I stopped seeing the bugs in the house, but the paper bag in the garage was full of them.

google meal moth larvae. If that's it, they come in cereal, flour, etc. you'll have to dump everything in your pantry, but that shoujld take care of it.

Look up. What is above the spot where you found them? A vent, or even a light fixture? Because if something died in the ceiling interspace, the maggots would have no problem dropping down through the spaces around the light fixture onto the floor.

If they are maggots, just clean them up and wait it out. Very soon (a matter of 2-3 days) they will have finished eating whatever they hatched in, and will be gone.

Do you have a pet?

I know this was last years post, but the same thing happened to me the other day;
out of nowhere on the hardword floor in the living room, nothing dead! So where
are they coming from? and how do I get rid of them?

14:43, I am afraid you might be right. They are not fuzzy at all so they don't look like any of the pics of carpet bettle larvae I've found online. They really do look like maggots -- I just don't know where they could possibly be coming from. A dead critter inside a wall??? There's no smell and we haven't seen any flies.

This is beyond gross. I'll see what the exterminator says tomorrow.

Love this site What's That Bug? for figuring out what those weird bugs are. I found it when I was researching whether house centipedes were poisonous! (They're not.)

Here's hoping... but I have had carpet beetles too, and they look nothing like what you described. They're fuzzy, for one, and much darker in color. You described exactly the maggots that we had.

12:14 -- Eeeewww!!!

OP here. Exterminator thinks they are carpet beetle larvae. He is going to call me tomorrow after he takes them back to the office to double-check, but it makes sense b/c the areas where I found them are on the wood floors around the perimeter of the area rug.

He sprayed some kind of noxious chemical and said not to worry about it & that should kill them.

Sounds like maggots. You might have had something die in your walls or chimney or other vent.

We had this a few months ago, and it was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was exactly like you describe: found one bug one day, a dozen the next day, etc. Oddly, we never smelled the dead bird, but the flies, then the maggots, and then the flies again (oh, and the feathers that drifted down from the flue) were a dead (ha!) giveaway.

Assuming it's a little bird or mouse (which it probably is, because the reason the maggots leave the corpse is because they're running out of food) it will all be over in a week. No more dead animal, no more food, no more maggots/flies. You have my deepest sympathies.

9:12, I already put two in a plastic bag for the exterminator. (I usually do that if I don't know what they are.)

I looked online for few minutes and honestly, they might be maggots, but I don't have any idea how they could just be appearing out of nowhere on the hardwood floor in our family room. I even moved all the furniture looking for a stray cup, dish, or some kind of food that a kid could have hidden, but there's nothing that could be a food source. Pantry, food storage, etc. is not near where I am finding them, and the food storage areas look ok to me (no bugs).

The exterminator is going to try to get here this afternoon. If not, first thing tomorrow morning.

Will post when I find out what they are.

Ugh, this is so disgusting.

once you find out the answer, can you please post.

I think I have the same bugs

Prepare samples for the exterminator in case there aren't any available for catching when he comes. When he tells you what he thinks they are, look up pictures online to double-check that he's making sense. Also, keep a sample in reserve in case you need to send it to a real entomologist for identification. It shouldn't be necessary, but over the years, I've had technicians make bad identifications 3 times, which really complicated treatment.

Yesterday I found one of these and didn't think much of it. This morning I picked up at least a dozen off our family room floor!!

They are about the size of a grain of rice, and pale yellowish color with a little brown spot at the tip. They look like grubs or some kind of larval stage of an insect. Could they be maggots? If so, wouldn't they need a food source like an open garbage can or something??

My fear is that whatever they are, the ones I found are the tip of the iceberg, there's a nest somewhere, and they're all going to morph into some even more disgusting bug and infest my whole house.

I am calling the exterminator now but does anyone know what these could be?? Help - I am freaking out!