the prisoners with weapons) They were driven, seventy one of them, of which only two could sing a psalm, which they repeated when they walked as soon as it ended. Many fainted on the way out of weakness and death wish, and those were carried by their families up until the place of execution, which was in the middle in the parish, half a mile from all the three churches, and called "The Mountain of the Stake." On the mountain, the prisoners were decapitated away from the stakes, so as not to drown the wood in blood and make it hard to light, and when they were dead, their families took off their clothes and lifted their bodies on the stakes, which were lit and burned until they went out by themselves. The families of the executed then went home, according to Britta Rufina, without showing any emotions, as if they were completely numbed. Aftermath The Torsåker executions had, even at the time they occurred, dubious legitimacy. Neither the commission or any local courts had the rights to conduct any executions. They were expected to report their sentences to the higher court, which was to confirm them before the sentences could be carried out. The high court normally only confirmed a minority of the death sentences. In the case of Torsåker, the local court commission did not report the sentences to the high court, but executed the prisoners directly without confirmation of the sentences from their superiors, and the execution was therefore not lawful. The commission was also called from Torsåker to the capital to answer for their actions. They were defended by the local authorities in Torsåker, but there were to be no more executions in Torsåker. The witch-hunt in the country continued; after the Torsåker witch trial, it reached the capital, where it lasted until 1676 and ended with the execution of Malin Matsdotter during the Katarina witch trials in Stockholm, after which the authorities proved that the child witnesses were lying and it had been a mistake. In 1677, all the priests in the country were ordered to tell their congregations in the churches that the witches had now been expelled from the country forever to avoid further witch trials. In Torsåker, the boys who had pointed at the women at the church, the so-called "visgossarna" (the tale boys), were found with their throats cut. Memorial stone