Hatch and wiper strangeness

I plan to dig into this a bit further, but was curious if anyone else has run into this.....

Occasionally while driving, the rear wiper will start running without me turning on the switch. Sometimes, when I DO turn on the switch, it will not stop wiping when I do turn the switch off. The crazy part is when I put the car in park, it stops wiping! I figure this is a short to power somewhere, and this should be interesting to find. I'm going to guess the wiring for the rear wiper is buried in the headliner......lol.

When it was snowing on Saturday, the hatch randomly started popping. At first, it would happen a couple times and stop. However, at one point it was continuously making the annoyingly loud hatch pop sound, and I literally had to pull the fuse for the rear hatch. Thankfully, at that point it did stop which makes me think the wiper and it are separate issues. Seems to really only happen when it is wet outside and snowing/raining.

My wagon is officially not enjoying the negative temperatures. Left it outside overnight and it didn't want to start the next morning. Not even a click, but the battery power was fine. Windows would go up and down, stereo was fine, etc. Let it sit for about another 5 minutes and it started right up........weird.

At this point, it could be anything from the switch to a short in the wiring.  I would start with the switches. Get your VOM out, and start checking for shorts in the components. If the part is activating, you probably do not have a short in the wiring to ground. You may have a short from one wire to another, supplying power when it is not supposed to have power.

As far as starting, I would look at the connections for the solenoid, the solenoid itself,  and then wiring and switches.

Right. I had a look at the back of the wiper and hatch switches. They appear to be wired separately and are actually separate switches. Fortunately, or unfortunately the car is not acting up now that it has stopped snowing for a day.

At this point I'm wondering if water is getting into the motor contacts and shorting it. The wiper, not sure. It's so strange that putting the car in park stops the wiper and that the switch is unresponsive at times.

The switch on the dash works a relay on the convenience center for the hatch release. They both connect to the hot wire, not ground. Unless there is a hot lead in the gate, and it is shorting to the latch solenoid, the solenoid itself can not short internally. The rear glass release relay is grounded through the transmission position switch at the base of the steering column. The only time the glass release relay should be grounded is when the car is in neutral, or park. If you have keyless entry, the unit could have a bad relay, and open the gate while driving, but again only if the transmission position switch is in neutral, or park.

Ok, piecing things together here. I don't remember the glass popping while driving. Only while parked. Wiper runs all the time until put in park, but that is intermittent.

It kind of sounds like something internally has shorted in the relay for the hatch release. The wiper is on a separate circuit it looks like.