In 1952, a decade after Carl Barks had left the Disney Studios in Burbank, California, an animated Donald Duck short called Trick or Treat was released. It was directed by Jack Hannah with whom Barks had worked for a few years in the Disney story department. Barks was not involved with the film itself, but during the final stages of the process he was contacted and asked if he would adapt a comic book story from it. The actual contact came from Alice Cobb who was the editor for Western Publishing, the company for which Barks worked during his entire comic book career.
Barks agreed but he was never shown any parts of the finished film; to aid him the studio only supplied photostats of some of the storyboard sketches as well as copies of cels in preparation. These - along with the synopsis from which Barks used part of the dialogue (speech and lyrics) - constituted all that Barks was given in order to do his job! By the way, it may come as a surprise to learn that Barks did not even watch the actual cartoon until several years later.

It quickly became apparent to Barks that the story would not fill a normal 32-pager so he decided to add several scenes that he invented by himself. The scenes were cleverly spun in between the scenes from the original story. But Barks' inventiveness was not appreciated. In fact, Cobb got angry and cut out the extra material and informed Barks that he had to come up with a short story that could fill the magazine instead. He did so by making Hobblin' Goblins as a 9-page filler in just 5 weeks...
The final result was published in DD26 Trick or Treat. In later editions Barks' 'inbetween' pages were restored so frequently, that his original 32-pager is regarded by many as the foremost version.