It's Official, Polygon Is Full Of Crap!

[Radiance]

Frictional is also experimenting with "a fate worse than death" in its next game, SOMA, in which the "basic idea is that 'death' is not final but takes the player closer and closer to a very disturbing state of being."

We acctually didn't see what happend with the player when the creature gets near. He looses focus and camera goes black. "A fate worse than death" adds additional terror if it's based on some addtional negative side effect after the death.
In Dark souls, character doesn't acctualy die but he goes "hollow" which is connected by the state of soul (->tied with the lore). He can loose health after that.
In many human religions death is only a transition or a cycle and not the final switch.
For now we can only speculate about this but I'm glad FG is tackling profound mankind's question.