Intrigued with imagining that the dusty old attic of St. Mary of Czestochowa School in Cicero is haunted, students were captivated by the prospect of their principal camping out there.

Principal Al Theis promised to sleep overnight in the 102-year-old attic as long as they raised $2,000, or 200,000 pennies, for the school.

The kids collected 202,017 coins, mostly pennies, and Theis fulfilled his end of the deal last week when the fundraiser and school year ended.

Students wondered if their principal would be scared, but he wasn’t.

“I came across a few cobwebs, but I didn’t find any spiders or other critters, I’m glad,” he said. “And everybody thought I’d see mice, but I didn’t.”

The school gave students a phone number where the principal could answer any of their calls verifying that he was there. He said one child called, asking if he was OK.

The space was once a church sanctuary of St. Mary of Czestochowa parish from 1905 to 1918, and in the 1920s it was occupied by a savings and loan association. Theis pointed out the old steeple that remains, and compared a window to where the character Bailey would do his bank transactions in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“I felt like I was sleeping in the middle of history,” he said.

St. Mary of Czestochowa School’s history began 112 years ago, when classes would meet in a shed on the same corner at 30th Street and 48th Court.

The school was fundraising for operational needs, and while the goal was to collect pennies, Theis said they didn’t refuse nickels, dimes, quarters and dollar bills since the fundraiser began in February.

Alumni contributed, and among them were graduates from the 1930s. Vintage coins were among the donations.

The students also gave out of their own pockets.

Fourth-grade teacher Rosemary Salazar said her students “seemed to want to do anything just to get him up there” in the attic.

Some of the money her class raised came from one student who secretly “sprinkled changed” a few times on her desk when the class left for bathroom breaks and for lunch.

“I would be at the front of the line and so I wouldn’t see who was doing it, and then when we’d come back, I’d ask, ‘Who put this here?’ And no one would answer,” she said.

The class had dress-down days when students could wear clothing other than their uniforms if they brought one dollar.

“A lot of them were bringing more than a dollar,” she said. “Some came in uniform but were still bringing in a dollar or 50 cents.”