TL;DR: mushrooms turning black when drying, ¿wat do?

i am from so-cal so i have no experience whatsoever with this mushroom, but i have been harvesting a fair amount over the past 2 days, and i am not sure if i am fucking things up or not.

so basically i had enough to fill a gallon ziploc but no real plan of how to dry them; so i just rinsed them, patted them dry with paper towels, and stuck them in the freezer.

after doing some researched i decided to defrost a few in a pot of 95º-ish (definitely below 120) water, then i squeezed a good amount of water out (so they werent soaking), and put them on a paper plate with some paper towels on the window sill (window open, with a fan over them).when they dried, they were all black except for a piece of the cap just above the stem (even then it had a black spot in the middle). i figured it was rot, but i read that they smell like rotting flesh when they rot, and they still smelled the same (very nice scent, smells like it would go well for cooking, especially with some teriyaki lol). but i spied some traces of mold all along the window sill, so i figured that might be the cause.
so i defrosted one more (approx 9 in diameter cap ). then sat it next to a fire ( i was reading somewhere that chinese[?] people used to roast it over open fires) to dry for a bit (after having pressed them lightly into the pot). they got a bit of soot on them from the metal rack i had them on, but i don't feel i should be overly concerned about this.

now that big cap is on the paper plate drying, only on top of my cabinets where it is warm and dry (no traces of mold to speak of), and i have a fan blowing over it, and they are all turning black. granted they had some black before (mostly from soot and smoke [occasionally i would hold the rack and pass it over the top of the flame swiftly, so as not to burn them] ) they are still pretty damp and squishy, smell like fresh amanitas but.. the entire skin is black, and the edges of the gills are turning black now (it spread from the skin to the gills the last time as well :\), and i have no idea what is causing it.

any ideas?

You need to fully dry your mushrooms before freezing. I think because you froze them before drying, and thawed, they oxidized and decayed.

Yea, every case I've heard of people freezing wet mushrooms whether amanita or psilocybe ends with a pile of black squishy mush. The best time to dry is after picking by blowing air over/through a pile of mushrooms. My preferred method is to sit a steel colander full of wet mushrooms on a small fan until the mushrooms are as dry as air will get them...to about a cardboard consistency (like stale crackers or something). Then stick em in a jar with desiccant for another day or two and you'll have bone-dry mushies.

it wasnt mush though..
dry chips, just black.
i guess i will have to trash these and harvest more
i hate being so wasteful.
i had a sneaking suspicion it was the freezer after the second time they started blackening.
thanks for your guys' help

If you're set on drying them, the method Snozz describes will work well. But I'd really strongly suggest pickling some of them. Fresh or pickled mushrooms taste a whole lot better than dried ones. I've done them fresh in a fairly traditional pickling brine as well as after sauteing them in butter first. Either way, I like to add a couple cloves of garlic to the brine to be safe.

^^^^^^^^^
That's awesome! Definitely gonna put that on the to-do list