Richard, this happened to me a few weeks ago. I had an old, specific to Christmas Day, science story. Not that interesting. One day it shot up 2.4K reads and I was shocked. But, I think only about 6 Medium members read it. I then found it by just googling the title and there it was. So, all the readers were on google and not a one counted. I was still honored so many read it. I wish they all counted.

But, what bothered me was that as I scrolled down the article to the end a bunch of my other articles were beneath it just like here on Medium. So, anyone could read them all. That didn't make sense. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now, but it's never happened again that I know of. Google your article title and see if it comes up.