I just posted a picture of my black rock in the mineral identification area and it seems like it actually might possibly be jade. It scratched with quartz, but not with stainless steel (left behind a graphite like mark with the stainless steel).
I haven't heard the wild stories of Maine mineral mine owners, but can believe it. I did go to one area that had tailings regularly dumped from Mt. Mica. They had clearly "seeded" the top of the pile with tiny tourmaline crystals so I wouldn't go back there. However, everything else looked pretty authentic, lots of lepidolite and quartz and such. The funny thing was that at the restaurant across the street (the only one nearby), the fellow had used rocks that light up under blacklight to make the impressive stone fireplace into a monument of Christian symbolism with crosses and other things that lit up. The food was good. Perhams though was the place that used to be famous. Perhams had amazing tourmaline ... truly amazing... and many other minerals they had found over the years. Nearby they had land where they said I could go dig for free and pretty much the entire area was just one giant glittering heap of mica and quartz and such. I didn't have my shovel or anything with me but picked up a few things. There was no one else around. They have since closed the store, sadly. I loved going to look.