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I'm writing a horror short-story, and at the end the main character dies and his partner is whisked away forever. I had intended to write it in first-person, because the narrative becomes more personal that way and you can really get into the head of the main character. This answer asserts that a first-person narrator has to survive to tell the tale. I know of only one way around this, which is a journal that ends right before the main character's death (The Haunter in Darkness, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), but in my story his death is only half of what makes the ending interesting so that won't work.
I had already intended to switch the POV for the last paragraph and write it in third person, so the reader can watch what happens to the two men. But does the sequence I'm going for constrain the whole story to third person?
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There have been a number of books and movies that included "And then I died -- but I got better!" moments. One of the best done ones was The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (movie, 1988): "And that was but one of many times I have died -- an experience I highly recommend!"
Another end-run is like the ending of Fallen (movie, 1998) -- "I told you, this was a story about the time I almost died." The mislead, from the first words of the prologue, was that the antagonist's speech was narrated in the protagonist's voice, and written so it seemed, right up until the end, to be the protagonist narrating (from the grave, as it appeared).
I don't know if this fits your story, but you could send your main character's soul to some form of afterlife place. Assuming there is some way the souls can watch earth, he could observe what happened after his death. He could be telling the story to some fellow soul whom he met in afterlife.
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