Like ghosts, the shadowy outlines inside a crystal can sometimes just barely be seen     Index to Quartz Digging Cleaning Worth Fee Pay Mines Types Forms Inclusions Geology Mineralogy Synthetic Gemstones Handedness Experiments

Black shale tip phantom from Montgomery County; Chlorite phantom, Garland County; mud inclusion in negative smoky crystal (pseudo-phantom), near Glenwood, Montgomery County; double terminated double black shale phantom - Collier Creek mine, Montgomery County. Phantom quartz has the characteristic of displaying some of the past growth history of a given crystal, due to either the deposition of some mineral matter on faces during deposition or due a change in the conditions of growth, such as stoppage or interruption of the growth. Phantoms are relatively common in smoky or amethyst quartz worldwide and are seen as growth zoning, displayed as variable color shades -- alternating light and dark zones, particularly when looking in the dominant face on the termination (the dominant trigonal pyramid face). Examples of phantoms from Arkansas include those that contain various mineral matter, such as the so-called blue phantoms which enclose fine-grained black shale particles, and white cap phantoms which have a termination of white milky quartz covered by clear rock crystal. In the instance of blue phantoms, many specimens will consist of multiple phantomed crystals. Most often blue phantoms do not exhibit a complete crystal internally. A third example of included minerals include green chamosite (an iron-rich variety of chlorite called thuringite). Specimens of green phantoms most often are recovered from veins adjacent to shale, having extracted the chemical components necessary for the formation of this mineral from the shale host. These crystals may appear as cloudy uniformly pastel green phantoms with clear quartz coatings or as granular zones on 2 or 3 faces. Many of these types of phantoms only display a few faces with the phantom appearance. This is because the included mineral material was being washed through the vein by the mineralizing fluid as fine-grained suspended particles. The back or eddy side of the crystals is where this material could settle out of the fluid onto the crystal. When you view a specimen consisting of many phantoms of this type, often all the crystals that extend directly from the cavity wall have the same orientation. When this is true, you can determine the direction of flow of the mineralizing fluid. Terminal crystal faces grow more rapidly and become dominant that "face" the flow; those that are on the "backwater" in the eddies cannot grow as rapidly and become smaller relative to the others. Even many clusters of rock crystal display this same characteristic. The other major type of phantoms often seen from Arkansas deposits are due to changes in the chemistry of the fluids or interruption of the growth cycle. Those that form a complete phantom termination fall into this category. They may be white-capped, pale "ghost-like" caps or even dissolved-appearing stubs preserved in well terminated rock crystal. Any change of the fluid's composition or stoppage of the fluid flow may result in a change in the rate of deposition of the crystal. To the left are crystals from a pocket at the Collier Creek mine in Montgomery County. Note the stub-type termination about half way down the length of the crystals.   In fact, some of the crystal may dissolve away. Tiny bubbles of gas or particles of shale may be trapped on crystals, particularly terminations, when a dry pocket again becomes fluid-filled. This can be preserved by the start up of rapid growth of clear crystal. The crystal in this photograph shows a combination of the stub-type interrupted growth and a termination phantom cap! These crystals may have gotten broken in the pocket and partly rehealed before major growth started again or may have had the termination dissolved away before regrowth. This closeup picture, left, displays what I consider to be solution features on the trigonal (termination) faces to the point that they are almost entirely dissolved away. Only relict features were left for the fine black shale particles to be deposited on. Note the diameter is also outlined by the shale particles. Look at the vertical picture of this type of phantom (above left) and you will see that these crystals well illustrate that quartz grows predominantly in the C axis direction! Below, a milky cloud phantom encased in colorless, transparent rock crystal. White Cloud mine, Saline County, AR A not-so-common type of phantom came from one mine in Saline County. Pale milky quartz crystals grew and then were coated with clear rock crystal. They look like white clouds encased in clear crystal. This site was unusual because of the occurrence of many minerals, all included in the quartz. Ankerite, siderite, cookeite, and even galena, all as inclusions, have been reported from this mine. Phantoms are relatively scarce overall in the Arkansas deposits, but at some locations certain veins or pockets may be prolific in production. The most notable mines where phantoms occur are located in the Crystal Mountains in the Mount Ida region (Montgomery County) and at some locations in the Stanley Shale in Saline, Garland, and even Polk Counties. At least two locations were named for their phantom crystal -- Blue Phantom mine (Wegner) and White Cloud mine (now called the Green contract, being named after the family that controls it). Also, smoky quartz with distinct phantoms is sometimes recovered from brookite-quartz deposits in the Arkansas Novaculite adjacent to the Magnet Cove intrusion in Hot Spring County. Two additional mines have yielded some remarkable phantoms. The Willis mine in Saline County is known to have produced the largest and some of the best chlorite-phantomed crystal in Arkansas. In the late 1980s, a few pockets of rock crystal to 15 inches in length and 8 inches in diameter that contained multiple zones of green phantoms were discovered. Some 50 to 60 specimens were retained by the mine owner and later were sold to a pair of local collectors for $10,000 when the owner decided to go out of the business. I traded for one $500 crystal (priced by the new owners) and saw that they had two of the crystals priced at $10,000 each. Definitely over-priced, but probably worth $2,500 each in Tucson! A few of these crystals have shown up at other dealers as the present owners have come back to reality as they need the money. The specimens from the Willis mine are distinctive, due to both their size and the distribution of chlorite in the crystals. The chlorite is distributed in one portion of the crystal, being deposited on the lee side of the moving fluids. I examined the crystal pictured to the left (the one I traded for) with my microscope and counted over 500 layers of chlorite in this one specimen! Don Burrow's Collier Creek mine produced many interesting types of quartz. While at his Mount Ida shop in the early 1990s he showed me some newly discovered phantom crystals that he had just dug and cleaned. They were the blackest cloud-type inclusions of shale I had ever seen. I purchased several at that time for my collection. These black phantoms are much darker than the Wegner's blue phantom crystal, which looks medium gray in comparison. In comparison to the more typical rock crystal that has been produced by the operators of the Collier Creek mine, these specimens are scarce. Note the single double-terminated black phantom crystal, only about 3/4ths of an inch in length. As my son would say, really sweet! Especially since I got it from another dealer for only $5 cash! I still like it better than any of the other several 100 pounds of quartz specimens that dealer had on display that day. **notes between author and illustrator** Ok, so what's the difference between a phantom and a growth zone? Well, a crystal grows by chemical accretion. It may grow in a prefered direction due to the internal structure to produce a prismatic, equidimensional or tabular crystal form. Typically, quartz is prismatic, galena is cubic or octahedral, and barite is tabular. In these instances, growth zones indicate where the crystal is accreting most rapidly. With quartz this growth is usually on either one of the trigonal termination sets of faces. Rapid growth of the termination faces (the growth zone) causes the crystal to be elongate. Rapid growth along one of the a axes results in a tabular quartz crystal. Sometimes the growth can be more rapid at the edges of the faces (where two faces join, like the common join of a termination face and a prism face). This results in the development of a multiple termination crystal. In this type of growth the termination consists of a "hollow point" with a stairstepped hole in the middle! Now this process really has no direct relationship to phantoms as the phantom simple represents either the capture of foreign material in the crystal as it was growing or another type of process mentioned below. Typical examples of captured minerals which form phantoms are shale particles or chlorite. Phantoms may also be caused by any mechanism which alters the continous growth process, such as drying out of the pocket, changes in the chemistry of the fluids supplying the growing crystal, earth movement, etc. Any of these processes which cause a change in the fluids may result in various types of phantoms: white capped phantoms ( the growth of a milky termination which then is covered with a growth of colorless rock crystal), white cloud phantoms (early growth of a milky crystal which is then coated with a later growth of rock crystal), or "ghost" phantoms which usually only consist of a pale phantom displaying only the termination faces. This latter type may be due to the drying out of a pocket and then resaturation with fluid. Tiny gas bubbles might adhere to the termination of the crystal, being incorporated as an almost invisible termination cap. I have seen this in examples from Brazil which have as many as 5 of these types of phantom terminations in an individual crystal. So I don't know if I answered your question about growth zones, which are either faces or edges and phantoms which display the early shape and form of the crystal during some stage in its growth. Q. I was wondering what minerals and/or impurities cause quartz to become "phantomed"? I have found only one "phantomed" crystal--from Ron Coleman's Mine in Jessieville. This particular crystal's inclusions seem to appear gray. (I hope inclusion is the correct word to use here)      I have heard of other "phantoms" from the Mt. Ida area that have blue and/or green inclusions?! Do you know about these? Are there other interesting forms of quartz to be had from this general area? What about quartz scepters? A. Phantoms are caused by a number of things that might happen while a crystal is growing. Any type of change, such as the chemistry of the water, growth interruption, or earth movement (structural adjustment) would have some effect on nearby quartz veins and the crystals forming in them. Sometimes just the type of host rock determines what type of inclusions may be present.      Now I should define the two terms I used, phantom and inclusion. A phantom is the form of the crystal expressed inside the present crystal faces. It may be due to fine-grained mineral matter that was deposited on the earlier and smaller crystal, or a fine coating of bubbles as the pocket periodically dried out, or as ground up rock dust created by nearby faulting that floated into the pocket and was deposited. An inclusion is simply any material encapsulated or enclosed by the mineral, in this case quartz, as the crystal grew. In gypsum, this may be sand or iron oxide.      In Arkansas quartz, inclusions can be many other minerals. Quartz has had a relatively lengthy time of growth, though episodic, when compared to other minerals. The following minerals and rock materials are often seen included in Arkansas quartz: adularia, thuringite (a variety of chlorite), cookeite, ankerite, calcite, pyrite-marcasite, quartz (as both sandstone grains and small crystals), brookite. Other minerals have been noted as inclusions, but are somewhat rarer in occurrence: cinnabar, stibnite, jamesonite, and galena. Phantoms take on several forms. Perhaps the most attractive are those crystals containing essentially complete caps or terminations coated with some material to make the point display well. Often these type consist of a fine coating of light-colored almost transparent mineral or tiny bubbles which formed on the point and were coated by the later deposition of clear quartz. Most often phantoms display only two or perhaps three of the prism or side faces of the crystal with a mineral or rock material coating them. Clouds of inclusions sometimes fill the early-formed crystal, which was then coated with colorless quartz. One mine in Saline County was named the White Cloud mine due to the white cloudy phantoms that were often recovered from it. The materials most often composing the phantoms are: chlorite, bubbles, and tiny shale particles. All of the so-called blue phantoms, black phantoms, manganese phantoms and manganese inclusions and carbon phantoms are actually finely divided particles of shale, a relatively common host rock in the Ouachita Mountains. I don't care what the crystal dealer or miner says, I have had many of these analyzed and the crystals are always aluminum-rich with no trace of manganese or carbon present. Even some earlier geologists were fouled up on this problem by making guesses instead of having the chemistry run on the material. I should also say something about chlorite. Little work has been done on included chlorite in Arkansas crystal, but wherever chlorite is present, the host rock is shale-rich. The iron, silica, and other elements necessary to form chlorite in the quartz veins are evidently derived from leaching of the nearby shaley units. Quartz scepters are rare in the deposits of the Ouachita Mountains. The scepter habit is thought to originate as a second phase of growth after the fluids have stopped flowing for awhile. It is not uncommon to have smoky or amethyst scepter-type growth on rock crystal original growth, showing that the fluids have changed dramatically. The new growth simply originates on the terminations of existing crystals. Japanese-twinned quartz specimens are known, but scarce, from Arkansas. Good quality specimens bring from a few $100 to several $1000 a piece. In the past few years, a notable number of Japanese twins have come from the Collier Creek mine and Fisher Mountain, both localities in Montgomery County, and even a few from the Old Coleman mine in Garland County.   Contact the authors of Rockhounding Arkansas Revised January 1999 ©Rockhounding Arkansas 1998 http://rockhoundingAR.com