What is meant by "possessed by spirits" in Buddhism?

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Yes, various other beings can possess humans e.g. hungry ghosts, Yakṣas, Maras

Here's one occasion where a human was possessed by a Mara named Dusi and the Mara being Moggallana himself in that life.

At that time, Moggallana was Mara, chief of demons, lord of the lower worlds, and his name was Mara Dusi. He had a sister by name of Kali whose son was to become the Mara of our age. Hence Moggallana's own nephew was now standing in front of him at the door post. While being the Mara of that distant time, Moggallana had attacked a chief disciple of the previous Buddha by taking possession of a boy and making him throw a potsherd at the holy disciple's head so that blood was flowing.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/hecker/wheel263.html#ch9

Not only humans, even Brahmas can be possessed by Maras.

"Then Mara, the Evil One, taking possession of an attendant of the Brahma assembly, said to me, 'If, good sir, this is what you discern, if this is what you have awakened to, do not lead (lay) disciples or those gone forth. Do not teach the Dhamma to (lay) disciples or those gone forth. Do not yearn for (lay) disciples or those gone forth. There were, good sir, before your time, brahmans & contemplatives in the world who claimed to be worthy & rightly self-awakened. They led (lay) disciples & those gone forth. They taught the Dhamma to (lay) disciples & those gone forth. They yearned for (lay) disciples & those gone forth. Having led (lay) disciples & those gone forth, having taught the Dhamma to (lay) disciples & those gone forth, having yearned for (lay) disciples & those gone forth, they — on the break-up of the body, with the cutting off of life — were established in a coarse body.
Brahma-nimantanika Sutta: The Brahma Invitation

It's also said that Ananda wasn't able to invite Buddha to prolong his life during the last days of his life because he was possessed by Mara during that time. During the first council monks accused Ananda for not doing that and he defended himself by giving this excuse.

The fourth accusation which the monks leveled at Ananda, referred to the time when he had neglected to beg the Blessed One to remain for an aeon. Ananda defended himself by saying he had been possessed by Mara at the time, and therefore had not been responsible for his actions — how could he have otherwise failed to make this request?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/hecker/wheel273.html#section-9

So, according to Buddhist texts such cross realm interactions is possible and it seems that the victim is not responsible for his or her actions done at that time.

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Apparently, the foremost Dada poet in Japan was possessed by mara, and ended up in an ayslum.

Very intriuging, I think.

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Mara will sometimes disturb or harm you when you are having certain good progress in meditation. You may hear some stories about people who become mentally ill after they practiced meditation for a long period time. This is one of the reasons.

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In my tradition, the Shambhala line of teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, ascending to Jamgon Kongtrul and ultimately Milarepa, the "spiritual" and the "material" phenomena are understood to be two narrative explanations of the same underlying reality. So when we talk about supernatural stuff like spirits etc. we always refer to phenomena that actually happen in everyday life but lack adequate representation in the mainstream narrative.

In modern language, spirits are semi-stable configurations of information-causation that inhabit the noosphere and sustain themselves through behavioral patterns mediated by sentient beings.

To give an example you can relate to, you send your child to a summer camp and they come back intoxicated by the camp spirit. They act funny, and when you point it out, they say we don't get it and insist their gestures and attitude are their own, while you clearly see they've picked it up. After several days home the camp spirit rubs off.

...In the adult world there may be a spirit of organization that influences all employees in certain ways etc...

Another example is campaign spirit - your teen daughter goes to a Greenpeace lecture and comes back possessed by the Greenpeace spirit. She donates her money to the ecological causes, spends her summer washing the birds caught in the oil spill etc.

If you look at it this way, you will see the world full of spirits, large and small. Your husband purchases a new camera, and feels obliged to spend his weekend taking pictures - he is possessed by the camera spirit.

These all seem harmless, until you remember all harm and violence incurred by religious and political fanatics - possessed by their respective spirits.

I don't know why late Theravada's Pratimoksha discounts misdeeds done while possessed by the spirits. From my perspective, guarding the doors of the senses is responsibility of the practitioner, and it is due to incorrectly applied attention that possession by spirit occurs. In the highly competitive world, where we are constantly bombarded by ads, campaigns and other forms of spirits, we must be very selective when it comes to which ones we give our attention to. As said in that Native American folktale, whichever wolf we feed is getting stronger. So is with spirits.

We can let ourselves be driven by spirits that correlate with greed, hatred, and confused values -- or we can feed useful spirits, conducive to health, peace, harmony, and informed, educated, strategic attitudes.

Buddhism itself can be seen as a spirit, and as any spirit can only take us this far until we become its pawns. So in the advanced stages of Vajrayana practice, our game becomes to liberate ourselves from the spirit of Buddhism, just like we've worked to come out of influence of worldly spirits. Once we are past that phase, having awakened (bodhi) from the spirit dream, we can use spirits as tools to pay our student dues forward and save the rest of sentient beings from the matrix into the real world.

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